How do I make a PATCH request in PHP using cURL?

Question

I have to make a PATCH request using PhP cURL. I couldn't find any documentation, so I tried the following but it isn't working.

$data = "{'field_name': 'field_value'}"; $url = "http://webservice.url"; $headers = array('X-HTTP-Method-Override: PATCH'); $curl = curl_init(); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers); $response = curl_exec($curl); curl_close($curl); 

Any idea why this isn't working? How can I fix it?

Edit: I am connecting to a RESTful web service. It returns HTTP/1.1 200 for successful requests. Unsuccessful requests return HTTP/1.1 403. I keep getting 403.

I tried changing $data to:

$data = "data={'field_name': 'field_value'}"; 

It didn't change the outcome.

Edit2: The final working code.

$data = "{'field_name': 'field_value'}"; $url = "http://webservice.url"; $headers = array('Content-Type: application/json'); $curl = curl_init(); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'PATCH'); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers); $response = curl_exec($curl); curl_close($curl); 

Answer 1

curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'PATCH'); should do it.

Answer 2

JSON PATCH would be better for data format since this format is designed for HTTP PATCH request. See https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6902 for the spec. The tutorial of Rails 4 show the example(http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#http-patch).

// https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6902#section-4 $data = '{ "op": "add", "path": "/a/b/c", "value": "foo" }'; $headers = array('Content-Type: application/json-patch+json');