Consuming REST APIs
Use file_get_contents() with context for simple GET requests, or the cURL extension for full HTTP control. Guzzle is a popular HTTP client library.
PHP
Intermediate
5 min read
Consuming REST APIs in PHP
Example
<?php
// Simple GET with file_get_contents
$context = stream_context_create([
"http" => ["header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . $token]
]);
$response = file_get_contents("https://api.example.com/users", false, $context);
$users = json_decode($response, true, 512, JSON_THROW_ON_ERROR);
// POST with cURL
$ch = curl_init("https://api.example.com/users");
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_POST => true,
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode(["name" => "Alice"]),
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => ["Content-Type: application/json"],
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
]);
$result = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);
curl_close($ch); Pro Tip
Use Guzzle for production HTTP requests — it handles retries, timeouts, middleware, and async requests cleanly.