retrieve Json information from php file using cURL

Question

ive seen lots of examples and to be honest i am a little confused on the matter.

I have been doing php for only 3 weeks so i am very new to this.

Basically i have wrote a function that asks for a token and a url, then it checks the database to if is exists, if it exists it then will offer a json array. I was wondering how select file and enter the function and retrieve the json data using cURL.

The function i have created is within the http://www.domain.com/api.php

Here is the function code:

function check_api_website($token, $url){
$token = trim(htmlentities($token));
$safetoken = mysql_real_escape_string($token);
$url = trim(htmlentities($url));
$safeurl = mysql_real_escape_string($url);

$checkwebsite = "SELECT message,islive FROM websitetokens WHERE url='".$safeurl."' AND token='".$safetoken."'";
$checkwebsite_result = mysql_query($checkwebsite) OR die();
$numberofrows = mysql_num_rows($checkwebsite_result);

if($numberofrows > 0){

    $website = mysql_fetch_array($checkwebsite_result);
    $message = stripslashes($website["message"]);
    $islive = stripslashes($website["islive"]);

    json_encode(array(
        'message' => $message,
        'islive' => $islive,
    ));

    $date = date('Y-m-d');
    $time = gmdate('H:i');

    $loginwebsite = "UPDATE websitetokens SET loggedin='".$date."',time='".$time."' WHERE url='".$safeurl."' AND token='".$safetoken."'";
    $loginwebsite_result = mysql_query($loginwebsite) OR die();

} else {

    json_encode(array(
        'message' => '',
        'islive' => '1',
    ));

}

}

As you can see the json_encode is there and that is what i am wanting to retrieve.

If you could please explain a little also would help my learning.

Thanks for the help in advance :)

fivedigit · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-02 17:37:11Z

1

A simple request with cUrl to retrieve and parse JSON data would look like this:

function get_json($url) {
    $ch = curl_init();

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);

    $data = curl_exec($ch);
    $resultCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
    curl_close($ch);

    if ($resultCode == 200) {
        return json_decode($data);
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

You can place this method in your code and simply call it like this:

$json = get_json('http://www.example.com');

Good to see you're aware SQL injections and escaping the input. However, some PHP configurations might have the so called 'magic quotes' enabled, which escapes quotes on any input parameters with slashes.

If those slashes aren't stripped before calling mysql_real_escape_string, the resulting string will be double escaped. You can use a method like this to make sure everything gets escaped properly:

function escape_string($string) {
    if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
        $string = stripslashes($string);
    }
    return mysql_real_escape_string($string);
}

edited Feb 2, 2012 at 17:37

answered Jan 31, 2012 at 0:15

fivedigit

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7 Comments

Robert Over a year ago

@parameters - i cant see that this would send any variables to the function and to infact call a function, how would i be able to do that with cURL, or am i just not understanding this correctly, as it looks like you are just calling the url, but its not calling a function.

fivedigit Over a year ago

How you should call the get_json method? I updated my answer to include an example on how to do this.

Robert Over a year ago

the code has not updated for what i can see. For instance in the www.exampleurl.com/api.php the retrieve the json data it needs to fields input into the function, the token and url, your code only asks for data straight from the url, it doesnt call the function or input any fields into the the function.

fivedigit Over a year ago

If by fields you mean GET parameters, they can be included in the URL like such: http://www.example.com?token=abc123.

Robert Over a year ago

thank you for the examples and your time, i now understand a tiny little bit about it :)

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