ConFoo 2025

curl_init

(PHP 4 >= 4.0.2, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

curl_initInitialize a cURL session

Description

curl_init(?string $url = null): CurlHandle|false

Initializes a new session and returns a cURL handle.

Parameters

url

If provided, the CURLOPT_URL option will be set to its value. This can be set manually using the curl_setopt() function.

Note:

The file protocol is disabled by cURL if open_basedir is set.

Return Values

Returns a cURL handle on success, false on errors.

Changelog

Version Description
8.0.0 On success, this function returns a CurlHandle instance now; previously, a resource was returned.
8.0.0 url is nullable now.

Examples

Example #1 Initializing a new cURL session and fetching a web page

<?php

// Initializes a new cURL session
$ch = curl_init();

// Set URL and other appropriate options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.example.com/");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);

// Grab URL and pass it to the browser
curl_exec($ch);

?>

See Also

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User Contributed Notes 1 note

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8
NextgenThemes
1 year ago
This may be obvious, but:

Note that is MUCH faster to use use a single instance to make a series of curl requests rather than creating a new instance for each request.
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