php curl

// set post fields
$post = [
    'username' => 'user1',
    'password' => 'passuser1',
    'gender'   => 1,
];

$ch = curl_init('http://www.example.com');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post);

// execute!
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// close the connection, release resources used
curl_close($ch);

// do anything you want with your response
var_dump($response);

// Get cURL resource
$curl = curl_init();
// Set some options - we are passing in a useragent too here
curl_setopt_array($curl, [
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
    CURLOPT_URL => 'http://testcURL.com',
    CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Codular Sample cURL Request',
    CURLOPT_POST => 1,
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => [
        item1 => 'value',
        item2 => 'value2'
    ]
]);
// Send the request & save response to $resp
$resp = curl_exec($curl);
// Close request to clear up some resources
curl_close($curl);

function getUrl($url){
    $ch = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
    $response = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return $response;
}   

function makeAPICall($url){

        
        $handle = curl_init();

         
        // Set the url
        curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
        // Set the result output to be a string.
        curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
         
        $output = curl_exec($handle);
         
        curl_close($handle);
         
        echo $output;
    return $output;
    }

It is important to notice that when using curl to post form data and you use an array for CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS option, the post will be in multipart format

<?php
$params=['name'=>'John', 'surname'=>'Doe', 'age'=>36)
$defaults = array(
CURLOPT_URL => 'http://myremoteservice/', 
CURLOPT_POST => true,
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $params,
);
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, ($options + $defaults));
?>
This produce the following post header:

--------------------------fd1c4191862e3566
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="name"

Jhon
--------------------------fd1c4191862e3566
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="surnname"

Doe
--------------------------fd1c4191862e3566
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="age"

36
--------------------------fd1c4191862e3566--

Setting CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS as follow produce a standard post header

CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => http_build_query($params),

Which is:
name=John&surname=Doe&age=36

This caused me 2 days of debug while interacting with a java service which was sensible to this difference, while the equivalent one in php got both format without problem.