PHP Difference between Curl and HttpRequest

Question

I have a need to do RAW POST (PUT a $var) requests to a server, and accept the results from that page as a string. Also need to add custom HTTP header information (like x-ex

Answer 1

HTTPRequest (and the PECL extension) is built on libcurl.

http://us.php.net/manual/en/http.requirements.php

The HTTPRequest is really just an easier/more syntactically friendly way to perform the same task.

As Frank Farmer mentioned, you're more likely to have a target platform with curl already installed and could have difficulty getting the PECL library installed by the hosting provider.