What are nice use cases for cURL in PHP?

Question

It's evident that the cURL functions are very widely used. But why is that? Is it really only because the extension is mostly enabled per default?

While I can certainly relate to not introducing 3rd party libraries over builtins (DOMDocument vs phpQuery), using curl appears somewhat odd to me. There are heaps of HTTP libraries like Zend_Http or PEAR Http_Request. And despite my disdain for needless object-oriented interfaces, the pull-parameter-procedural API of curl strikes me as less legible in comparison.

There is of course a reason for that. But I'm wondering if most PHP developers realize what else libcurl can actually be used for, and that it's not just a HTTP library?

Do you have examples or actual code which utilizes cURL for <any other things> it was made for?

Or if you just use it for HTTP, what are the reasons. Why are real PHP HTTP libraries seemingly avoided nowadays?

Answer 1

I think this would be related to why do people use the mysql functions instead of mysqli (more object oriented interface) or take a step further and use a data abstraction layer or PDOs.

HTTP_Request2 says that there is a cURL adapter available to wrap around PHP's cURL functions.

Personally a lot of the PEAR extensions I have tried out, I haven't been that impressed with (and I feel less confident with PEAR libraries that are sitting in alpha that haven't been updated in a long time). Whereas the HTTP_Request2 Library does look quite nice

I for one would have used cURL without thinking of looking at a possible PEAR library to use. So thanks for raising my awareness.