How do these two pieces of code differ when accessing a REST API?
$result = file_get_contents('http://api.bitly.com/v3/shorten?login=user&apiKey=key&longUrl=url');
and
$ch = curl_init('http://api.bitly.com/v3/shorten?login=user&apiKey=key&longUrl=url'); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); $result = curl_exec($ch);
They both produce the same result, judging by
print_r(json_decode($result))
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Answer
file_get_contents()
is a simple screwdriver. Great for simple GET requests where the header, HTTP request method, timeout, cookiejar, redirects, and other important things do not matter.
fopen()
with a stream context or cURL with setopt are powerdrills with every bit and option you can think of.