PHP Difference between Curl and HttpRequest

Question

I have a need to do RAW POST (PUT a $var) requests to a server, and accept the results from that page as a string. Also need to add custom HTTP header information (like x-example-info: 2342342)

I have two ways of doing it

• Curl (http://us.php.net/manual/en/book.curl.php)
• PHP HTTP using the HTTPRequest (http://us.php.net/manual/en/book.http.php)

What are the differences between the two? what's more lean? faster? Both seem pretty much the same to me...

Answer 1

Curl is bundled with PHP, HTTPRequest is a separate PECL extension.

As such, it's much more likely that CURL will be installed on your target platform, which is pretty much the deciding factor for most projects. I'd only consider using HTTPRequest if you plan to only ever install your software on servers you personally have the ability to install PECL extensions on; if your clients will be doing their own installations, installing PECL extensions is usually out of the question.

This page seems to suggest that HTTPRequest uses CURL under the hood anyway. Sounds like it might offer a slightly more elegant interface to curl_multi_*(), though.

Answer 2

HTTPRequest (and the PECL extension) is built on libcurl.

http://us.php.net/manual/en/http.requirements.php

The HTTPRequest is really just an easier/more syntactically friendly way to perform the same task.

As Frank Farmer mentioned, you're more likely to have a target platform with curl already installed and could have difficulty getting the PECL library installed by the hosting provider.

Answer 3

The HTTPRequest is "kind of" a wrapper for curl. This two quotes from the manual should give you a clue:

• It provides powerful request functionality, if built with CURL support. Parallel requests are available for PHP 5 and greater.

• The extension must be built with » libcurl support to enable request functionality (--with-http-curl-requests). A library version equal or greater to v7.12.3 is required.

Said that (and said that I've never used this extension myself), looks like if you want your code to look more object oriented, you can go for this one, but it might be a bit slower, though nothing compared with the external call that you are going to make, so I won't consider performance to make my choice. I would give preference to the fact that curl is built in and this other you have to add it yourself, which is unconvenient and reduces portability in case you want to host your app in a shared environment that you don't control.

For the needs that you explained in your question, I would definitely go for curl.