How to send array with CURL? Should I `urlencode` it?

Question

When I assign an array of data to be POSTed as a cURL option (via CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS), do I need to urlencode that data first or will that be taken care of?

Answer 1

The C implementation of curl_setopt doesn't seem to URL-encode the text. However, in PHP5, the http_build_query function returns a query string representation of the array that is URL-encoded.

Example Usage

  $curl_parameters = array(
    'param1' => $param1,
    'param2' => $param2
  );

  $curl_options = array(
    CURLOPT_URL => "http://localhost/service",
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => http_build_query( $curl_parameters ),
    CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => 1.0,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HEADER => false
  );

  $curl = curl_init();
  curl_setopt_array( $curl, $curl_options );
  $result = curl_exec( $curl );

  curl_close( $curl );