Send HTTP POST Data to Remote URL

I’d like to share with you a function that I use a lot in my web projects. It’s useful to send data through POST from one location to another. It’s very useful if you need to send information from a server to a remote one. For example, you can use AJAX to call a PHP file from your website that when being accessed, it will send POST data to a Remote URL location and get its output, all of this being processed in the background.

/**
 * SendPostData()
 * 
 * @param mixed $_p
 * @param mixed $remote_url
 * @return
 */
function SendPostData($_p, $remote_url) {
	$remote_url = trim($remote_url);

	$is_https = (substr($remote_url, 0, 5) == 'https');

	$fields_string = http_build_query($_p);

	// Run this code if you have cURL enabled
	if(function_exists('curl_init')) {
		
		// create a new cURL resource
		$ch = curl_init();
		
		// set URL and other appropriate options
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $remote_url);
		
		if($is_https && extension_loaded('openssl')) {
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
		}
		
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $fields_string);            
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);

		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
		
		// grab URL and pass it to the browser
		$response = curl_exec($ch);
					
		// close cURL resource, and free up system resources
		curl_close($ch);

	// No cURL? Use an alternative code   
	} else {
		
		$context_options = array (
			'http' => array (
				'method' => 'POST',
				'header' => "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n".
							"Content-Length: ".strlen($fields_string)."\r\n",
				'content' => $fields_string
			 )
		 );

		$context = stream_context_create($context_options);
		$fp = fopen($remote_url, 'r', false, $context);

		if (!$fp) {
			throw new Exception("Problem with $remote_url, $php_errormsg");
		}

		$response = @stream_get_contents($fp);

		if ($response === false) {
			throw new Exception("Problem reading data from $remote_url, $php_errormsg");
		}
	}
	return $response;
}

Usage Example:

$response = SendPostData($_POST, 'http://www.myserver2location.com/receive-data.php');

PS: You can use any array variable as the first argument. $_POST is just a common one used in these situations.