Doing HTTP requests FROM Laravel to an external API

You just want to call an external URL and use the results? PHP does this out of the box, if we're talking about a simple GET request to something serving JSON:

$json = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://host.com/api/stuff/1'), true);

If you want to do a post request, it's a little harder but there's loads of examples how to do this with curl.

So I guess the question is; what exactly do you want?

As of Laravel v7.X, the framework now comes with a minimal API wrapped around the Guzzle HTTP client. It provides an easy way to make get, post, put, patch, and delete requests using the HTTP Client:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;

$response = Http::get('http://test.com');
$response = Http::post('http://test.com');
$response = Http::put('http://test.com');
$response = Http::patch('http://test.com');
$response = Http::delete('http://test.com');

You can manage responses using the set of methods provided by the Illuminate\Http\Client\Response instance returned.

$response->body() : string;
$response->json() : array;
$response->status() : int;
$response->ok() : bool;
$response->successful() : bool;
$response->serverError() : bool;
$response->clientError() : bool;
$response->header($header) : string;
$response->headers() : array;

Please note that you will, of course, need to install Guzzle like so:

composer require guzzlehttp/guzzle

There are a lot more helpful features built-in and you can find out more about these set of the feature here: https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/http-client

This is definitely now the easiest way to make external API calls within Laravel.

Based upon an answer of a similar question here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22695523/1412268

Take a look at Guzzle

$client = new GuzzleHttp\Client();
$res = $client->get('https://api.github.com/user', ['auth' =>  ['user', 'pass']]);
echo $res->getStatusCode(); // 200
echo $res->getBody(); // { "type": "User", ....

We can use package Guzzle in Laravel, it is a PHP HTTP client to send HTTP requests.

You can install Guzzle through composer

composer require guzzlehttp/guzzle:~6.0

Or you can specify Guzzle as a dependency in your project's existing composer.json

{
   "require": {
      "guzzlehttp/guzzle": "~6.0"
   }
}

Example code in laravel 5 using Guzzle as shown below,

use GuzzleHttp\Client;
class yourController extends Controller {

    public function saveApiData()
    {
        $client = new Client();
        $res = $client->request('POST', 'https://url_to_the_api', [
            'form_params' => [
                'client_id' => 'test_id',
                'secret' => 'test_secret',
            ]
        ]);
        echo $res->getStatusCode();
        // 200
        echo $res->getHeader('content-type');
        // 'application/json; charset=utf8'
        echo $res->getBody();
        // {"type":"User"...'
}