Sending a GET request with a request body with PHP cURL

Published: April 16, 2020

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• PHP

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Some APIs require GET requests with request bodies. I was looking into how to do that today and struggling with Google. Eventually I found this answer on StackOverflow.

PHP code is as follows:

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://maxchadwick.xyz');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'GET');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'THIS IS THE REQUEST BODY');

curl_exec($ch);

Some of the other answers on the StackOverflow thread are incorrect…If you remove CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST it will NOT default to a GET if you use CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS but will instead be a POST.

I used Burp Suite to intercept the request and confirm the above was doing a GET with a request body.