PUTting data fields with PHP cURL

This is a little post about how to PUT multiple data fields using the PHP cURL extension. Why I wanted to do this in the first place is beyond the scope of this post, since its quite a long story. The curl command line allows data fields to be sent with a PUT request, and I wanted to do the same from PHP. Here is a snippet of code to show how I did it.

        $data = array("a" => $a);
        $ch = curl_init($this->_serviceUrl . $id);

        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "PUT");
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,http_build_query($data));

        $response = curl_exec($ch);
        if(!$response) {
            return false;
        }

I’m putting this here so I remember for next time – if it helps you as well then even better :)

39 thoughts on “PUTting data fields with PHP cURL”

Leo on October 27, 2010 at 09:13 said:

Thx !

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Pingback: SugarCRM Developer Blog » Blog Archive » HOWTO: Do PUT requests with PHP cURL without writing to a file
Steve Mann on December 8, 2011 at 08:48 said:

You finally gave me the answer I was looking for with PUT variables – http_build_query(). Simple answer yet so hard to find! Thanks!

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Richard Eaton on December 23, 2011 at 14:45 said:

Brilliant!!! I’d been looking high and low for a SIMPLE example of using PUT with CURL in PHP but none of the examples worked or were way too complex for my needs. This little snipped of code was exactly what I needed to get some of my own code working :)

Many thanks for sharing…

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gobinathan on May 7, 2012 at 07:19 said:

thanks yar it works! :)

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Alex on May 20, 2012 at 06:31 said:

Thanks! Got really tired while trying to resolve that problem using standard documentation.

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duxx0r on June 28, 2012 at 22:27 said:

Thanks for taking the time to publish this! It was really helpful.

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Paul on July 10, 2012 at 08:29 said:

Thanks – very helpfull :)

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Kerem on August 3, 2012 at 11:37 said:

Sometimes that’s not enough, so you need more;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(‘X-HTTP-Method-Override: PUT’));

Link: http://tr.php.net/curl_setopt#109634

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- lornajane on August 14, 2012 at 09:54 said:
  
  Different services may need all kinds of different headers, and you can set them using this CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER as shown here. I haven’t seen that one before, but there are similar “features” in many APIs. Thanks for taking the time to add the code example.
  
  Reply ↓
priyank on September 6, 2012 at 04:49 said:

Hi i am still not able to get any response … i am using an external api which accepts put data .. plz help

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- lornajane on September 18, 2012 at 07:52 said:
  
  Sorry, I’m not sure how to help since these examples worked for me. Perhaps you can log a ticket with your API provider? Good luck!
  
  Reply ↓
Sébastien Grosjean on September 15, 2012 at 18:05 said:

Awesome, can’t believe this easy solution is so infrequently used ! Thanks so much for sharing.

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- lornajane on September 18, 2012 at 07:52 said:
  
  it’s just that nobody knows it’s there, I think. Hope it was helpful!
  
  Reply ↓
Nameless on September 25, 2012 at 10:40 said:

millions of thanks, it solved my problem.

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sunnyuff on November 23, 2012 at 07:19 said:

Thx ya. It Works.

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Pingback: cURL PUT vs Zend_Rest_Controller - Zend Framework Forum - ZF1 / ZF2
Ravi on February 16, 2013 at 02:23 said:

Simple and working code. Thx.

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Sanjay - Rao on March 28, 2013 at 12:26 said:

Many Many And Many Thanks, for this articles. it’s simple and also very helpful..

Thanks for this Post..

Have a good day..

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Vasim Padhiyar on July 27, 2013 at 16:55 said:

Thanks..
It help me to fix Xing.com api call.. Very helpfull.

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Pingback: SugarCRM Developer Blog » Blog Archive » Doing PUT and DELETE with CURL in PHP
Pingback: Doing PUT and DELETE with CURL in PHP « SugarCRM Developer Blog
shafqat on February 28, 2014 at 08:28 said:

How would one change your script to send an XML file; your code seems to be building the http_post code
Any help will be appreciated

By the way a grat write up..

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Andy on June 10, 2014 at 15:12 said:

Thank you so much for posting this. I’ve been banging my head against this issue for several hours.
Seems crazy that
[code]curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PUT, true);[/code]
and
[code]curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, “PUT”);[/code]
should produce identical results … but somehow the first one doesn’t work and the second one does.

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Shafiq Rehman on July 4, 2014 at 10:55 said:

Thanks, it really helps me

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snow6oy on July 16, 2014 at 07:30 said:

In reply to Andy’s comment, I think you can get CURLOPT_PUT to work if you provide the data using INFILE instead of POSTFIELDS. For example:
[code]
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PUT, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_INFILE, $putData);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_INFILESIZE, strlen($putString));
[/code]
I would guess the reason is that POST can be used with either form data or a payload, but using PUT with form data doesn’t make sense.

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Paolo Zaccaria Carati on October 17, 2014 at 15:35 said:

Some suggestion about putting a pdf file into CouchDB from php. Hope to be useful.

// url to CouchDB server
$url_path_str = ‘http://address-of-my-couchdb-server:5984/pdfdb/MYCODE/MYFILENAME.pdf’;

// path to the pdf file to insert into CouchDB database “pdfdb”
$file_path_str = ‘/path to my file.pdf’;

// header – please note that “Content-Type” is NOT “application/json” like used in other POST/GET calls with JSON data
$header = array(
“Content-type: application/pdf”,
“Cache-Control: no-cache”,
“Pragma: no-cache”
);

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url_path_str);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PUT, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, “PUT”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $header);

$fh_res = fopen($file_path_str, ‘r’);
$file_data_str = fread($fh_res, filesize($file_path_str));
rewind($fh_res);

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_INFILE, $fh_res);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_INFILESIZE, filesize($file_path_str));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$curl_response_res = curl_exec ($ch);
// the answer is similar to {“ok”:true,”id”:”MYCODE”,”rev”:”3-6e8cb7a70206c31a8f0dab27b3b25353″}

curl_close($ch);

fclose($fh_res);

// Warning : CouchDB requires that last document revision must be provided during document update

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- Clain Dsilva on May 1, 2016 at 11:18 said:
  
  Great this worked for me, one thing I noticed is that you do not have to specify a content type for uploading every file is treated as binary chunks hence if your server stores the file exactly as it is unless your server is looking for a specific MIME type.
  
  Reply ↓
Muhammed Khalander on March 12, 2015 at 08:31 said:

Thanks, It works, This post has Saved Time.

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Gene Kelly on May 30, 2015 at 14:34 said:

Follow this guide on receiving the put request.
http://lornajane.net/posts/2008/accessing-incoming-put-data-from-php

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Niko on July 2, 2015 at 09:18 said:

Another userful example which help me

$data = array(
“number” => “3dde3379-e38a-104c-089f-53b554ed5dfa”,
“email” => “[email protected]”,

);

$json_data = json_encode($data);

$headers[] = ‘Content-Type: application/json’;
$headers[] = ‘Content-Length: ‘ . strlen($json_data);

$ch = curl_init($url);

//That two line is very important for PUT!
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, “PUT”);

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $json_data);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$content = curl_exec($ch);
$info = curl_getinfo($ch);

curl_close($ch);

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Nagendra on October 9, 2015 at 12:51 said:

Perfect,Thanks a lot

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GaadiKey on December 29, 2015 at 12:37 said:

Thank you so much! This worked!

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darryl on July 26, 2016 at 14:48 said:

Still useful. Cheers!

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Saurabh Sinha on January 18, 2017 at 10:14 said:

Thanks a lot. Life saving post.

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Joshua Baldwin on August 8, 2017 at 18:17 said:

I am curious why you did not include [code]curl_close($ch)[/code] at the end of your code snippet for good measure. I get that it isn’t exactly necessary but I am a firm believer that it is good coding practice.

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- lornajane on August 10, 2017 at 16:41 said:
  
  I agree that the curl_close($ch) should be included. This post is 8 years old so I am afraid I can’t satisfy your curiosity about why it’s not there in the first place, sorry. Probably carelessness or an attempt to keep the post focussed??
  
  Reply ↓
Matjaž Prtenjak on October 13, 2018 at 18:51 said:

HI,

Many thanks for the code.

As already mentioned by others, the original code was not working in my case. I just had to change one thing and everything works perfectly.

Instead
[code]
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,http_build_query($data));
[/code]

I had to write:
[code]
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,json_encode($data));
[/code]

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Owen Parker on June 28, 2023 at 21:34 said:

13 years later and this tiny little nub is still proving useful… well done…

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PUTting data fields with PHP cURL

39 thoughts on “PUTting data fields with PHP cURL”

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