How to Send POST Data to a URL in PHP Without Using HTML Forms?

Posting Data to a URL in PHP

Sending POST data to a URL in PHP is a common task, especially when working with web services or submitting forms from scripts. In this article, we'll explore a method for doing this without utilizing HTML forms.

Curl to the Rescue

PHP provides the curl library, which allows us to interact with web requests. We'll use curl to send our POST data.

// Sample data to send (in a real application, these variables will be dynamic)
$myVar1 = 'value 1';
$myVar2 = 'value 2';

// URL to post data to
$url = 'http://www.example.com/form.php';

// Create a cURL handle
$ch = curl_init($url);

// Set cURL options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1); // Set as POST request
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "myVar1=$myVar1&myVar2=$myVar2"); // Set POST data
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1); // Follow redirects
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); // Do not return headers in response
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); // Return the response as a string

// Execute the cURL request
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// Close the cURL handle
curl_close($ch);

// Process the response
// In this example, a successful response would likely indicate that the form on the target page was submitted

This script will send the POST data to the specified URL, and the response from the server will be stored in $response. Remember to replace $myVar1, $myVar2, and $url with your actual data and target URL.

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