CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION

Question

I looked up google for more information. But the more I read, the more I am confused or wonder

I understand that CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION() follows "the location", but what is the location? Is it the url that is initialized?

  curl_setopt($curl_connection, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, false); 

I only need to post data into icontact mailing list - so would this snippet above prevent the data from going in the mailing list?

I printed $result and see that the data went in the correct mailing list although I cannot see whether the data are the correct ones which are from form.

Answer 1

Quoting from docs:

CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION TRUE to follow any "Location: " header that the server sends as part of the HTTP header (note this is recursive, PHP will follow as many "Location: " headers that it is sent, unless CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS is set).

When you request a URL, you can sometimes be redirected to some other URL. In PHP it'd be done with:

header('Location: http://example.com/');

This directive instructs CURL to load that URL instead of the original one, as HTTP mandates. There's normally no good reason to disable it.