Symfony2 – How to perform an external Request

Using Symfony2, I need to access an external API based on HTTPS.

How can I call an external URI and manage the response to “play” with it. For example, to render a success or a failure message?

I am thinking in something like (note that performRequest is a completely invented method):

$response = $this -> performRequest("www.someapi.com?param1=A&param2=B");

if ($response -> getError() == 0){
    // Do something good
}else{
    // Do something too bad
}

I have been reading about Buzz and other clients. But I guess that Symfony2 should be able to do it by its own.

Answer

I’d suggest using CURL:

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'www.someapi.com?param1=A&param2=B');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-type: application/json')); // Assuming you're requesting JSON
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

// If using JSON...
$data = json_decode($response);

Note: The php on your web server must have the php5-curl library installed.

Assuming the API request is returning JSON data, this page may be useful.

This doesn’t use any code that is specific to Symfony2. There may well be a bundle that can simplify this process for you, but if there is I don’t know about it.