Laravel 5.2 curl_init() throwing error "Call to undefined function"

Question

I am trying to use FCM in laravel using curl but I am getting error. First I have written one php code in one of my cotroller which is :

$first_name = $request->input('first_name');
      //FCM api URL
      $url = 'https://fcm.googleapis.com/fcm/send';
      //api_key available in Firebase Console -> Project Settings -> CLOUD MESSAGING -> Server key
      $server_key = 'AIzaSyA1RyuAGGPASh_flFCwiyd9ZHEMYlhQOho';
   $target = "r_token";
      $fields = array();
      $fields['data'] = $first_name;
      if(is_array($target)){
        $fields['registration_ids'] = $target;
      }else{
        $fields['to'] = $target;
      }
      //header with content_type api key
      $headers = array(
        'Content-Type:application/json',
        'Authorization:key='.$server_key
      );

      $ch = curl_init();
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($fields));
      $result = curl_exec($ch);
      if ($result === FALSE) {
        die('FCM Send Error: ' . curl_error($ch));
      }
      curl_close($ch);
      return $result;

And I am trying to run this code in my controller using laravel 5.2 but I am getting this error:

  FatalErrorException in WebKyoController.php line 52:
   Call to undefined function App\Http\Controllers\curl_init()

I have tried : sudo apt-get install php-curl and apache restart but still I am getting error. I just want to know what do I need to do.

Answer 1

I stumbled across this answer, so just in case another hapless soul follows, please try the following that worked for me.

1. Find out the version of PHP running

# php -v PHP 7.0.28-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 (cli) ( NTS ) ...

In this case, I have PHP 7.0

2. Install Curl for your version of PHP

sudo apt install php7.0-curl

3. To instantly apply this installation run

sudo service apache2 restart

4. Run your code again and see if it no longer errors on Curl.