php|architect's Guide to Web Scraping with PHP - Wind Business ...

52 ” pecl_http PECL Extension
• After HttpRequest is instantiated, its request method is explicitly set using the
constant HTTP_METH_POST.
• Request options are passed in this time, specifically the value for the Referer
header. They are specified as the fourth parameter of http_post_fields and
via setOptions.
• As with the GET request, the return values of http_post_fields and send are of
the same types (string and HttpMessage) as their respective counterparts in the
earlier GET example.
• Because http_post_fields does not have an object to use in retaining state, it
instead allo ws the option to pass in a fifth parameter $info in which it will store
information about the request and response. See http://php.net/http_get for
an example of the information stored in $info.
i
Alternative M ethods and M ore Options
F or request method constants beyond GET and POST used by the procedural API, see
http://php.net/manual/en/http.constants.php. F or more on available request options
for both APIs, see http://php.net/manual/en/http.request.options.php.
H andling H eaders
When using the procedural API, limited request header information is available
via the $info parameter of functions to issue requests. Response headers are included
in the string returned by those function calls. When the string is passed to
http_parse_message, it returns an object with a headers property, which is an associative
array of header values indexed by header name.
Custom request headers can be set via the ’headers’ request option, which is formatted
as an associative array with header names for keys pointing to corresponding
header values (as opposed to cURL, which uses an enumerated array with one
header name-value pair per array item). Belo w is an example of custom headers in a
request options array.