PHP Functions Essential Reference

Chapter 9. cURL Library Functions

This extension provides access to the cURL (Client URL Library) library for ease of access of URL-locatable network resources. For complete discussions of the capabilities of cURL, please visit http://curl.haxx.se. As of libcurl version 7.4, cURL could handle at least DICT, file, FTP, Gopher, HTTP, HTTPS, LDAP, and Telnet protocols; many advanced features of these protocols are also available. cURL support needs to be built into PHP using the --with-curl=[DIR ] configure option; you also need the library itself from http://curl.haxx.se. Some of the functionality described here requires versions of libcurl at least as recent as 7.4.1 (these are noted); however, most of it needs only at least 7.2. PHP cURL support ...