file_get_contents or curl in php?

curl, file-get-contents, php

Solution

First of all cURL has a lot of options to set. You can really set any option you need to - many supported protocols, file-uploads, cookies, proxies and more.

`file_get_contents()` really just GETs or POSTs the file and has the result.

However: I tried some APIs and did some "benchmarking":

cURL was a lot faster than `file_get_contents` Just try it with your terminal: `time php curl.php`

curl.php:

<?php 
$ch = curl_init();
$options = [
    CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_URL            => 'http://api.local/all'
];

curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);
$data = json_decode(curl_exec($ch));
curl_close($ch);

fgc.php

<?php 
$data = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://api.local/all'));

Averaged cURL was 3-10 times faster than `file_get_contents` in my case. The api.local responeded with a cached JSON file - about 600kb.

I don't think it was coincidence - But that you can't measure this accurately, because the network and the response times differ a lot, based on their current load / network speed / response times etc. (local networks won't change the effect - there will be load & traffic too)

But for certain use cases, it could also be that `file_get_contents` is actually quicker.

So I built a simple function: https://git.io/J6s9e

Problem

Which of `file_get_contents` or `curl` should be used in PHP to make an HTTP request? If `file_get_contents` will do the job, is there any need to use `curl`? Using `curl` seems to need more lines. eg: curl: ``` $ch = curl_init('http://www.website.com/myfile.php'); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $content); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); $output = curl_exec ($ch); curl_close ($ch); ``` file_get_contents: ``` $output = file_get_contents('http://www.website.com/myfile.php'.$content); ```

Original source