Curl PHP File Upload

Question

Hey, trying to post a file using curl and all is working great. I have one problem. I can't declare my file outside of my post_file() function. I call this function in my application many times so want it to be reusable.

So this works:

function call_me(){
    $file_path = "/home/myfile.mov";
    $url = "http://myurl.com";
    $this->post_file($url, $file_path);
}
function post_file($url, $file_path){
    $data['Filedata'] = "@".$file_path;
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data); 
    $response = curl_exec($ch);
    return $response;
}

However this does not:

function call_me(){
    $file_path = "/home/myfile.mov";
    $url = "http://myurl.com";
    $data['Filedata'] = "@".$file_path;
    $this->post_file($url, $data);
}
function post_file($url, $data){
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data); 
    $response = curl_exec($ch);
    return $response;
}

Any ideas? Cheers.

Answer 1

I don't really see a difference (for re-usability) between the two code sets. The only benefit of #2, is you're passing in the whole $data object - if that's a benefit at all... it leads to security issues with your CURL post... so is this really better than creating a new $data object each time (per #1)? With the function name post_file the expected behaviour would be per #1 - post a single file to the URL, while code #2 could be exploited/used for other kinds of things. Perhaps a usability enhancement of #1 would be:

function post_files($url,$files) {
    //Post 1-n files, each element of $files array assumed to be absolute
    // path to a file.  $files can be array (multiple) or string (one file).
    // Data will be posted in a series of POST vars named $file0, $file1...
    // $fileN
    $data=array();
    if (!is_array($files)) {
      //Convert to array
      $files[]=$files;
    }
    $n=sizeof($files);
    for ($i=0;$i<$n;$i++) {
      $data['file'+$i]="@".$files[$i];
    }
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data); 
    $response = curl_exec($ch);
    return $response;
}

As to why it's not working for you right now - I'm guessing there's a typo in there somewhere. Is this code copied exactly or are you paraphrasing for us? Try a print_r($data); just before the curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data); line.

There's no way for a function to know if the object was created within the function (#1) or passed in (#2).