getting NULL with cURL but Array with file_get_contents()

Question

I'm having problem with CURL from a link. I'm able to get an output with file_get_contents(); But having problems with CURL

use json_decode I get a NULL with cURL, but with file_get_contents() I get an Array

Using cURL

$url="https://example.com/" 
$ch= curl_init(); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); 
$json= json_decode(curl_exec($ch),true); 
echo $json; //outputs NULL

Using file_get_contents();

$json_pi = file_get_contents($url); 
echo json_decode($json_pi,true);

Can anyone help me understand cURL? And why I might be getting these two conflicting results?

Thank you!

Nobody can tell without a concrete example and the json input data. Possibly charsets. — mario
– mario, Commented Dec 10, 2011 at 19:48

Pekka · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-10 19:47:38Z

1

You are not doing any error checking after your calls, so if something goes wrong, you will never hear about it.

Check the result of the CURL call using curl_error()
Check the result of the json_encode() call using json_last_error() (PHP >= 5.3)

one of these will probably reveal what the problem is. For example, it could be that the curl call fetches the data in a non-UTF-8 character set, which will cause json_decode() to break - it expects UTF-8 data at all times.

answered Dec 10, 2011 at 19:47

Pekka

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3 Comments

hellomello Over a year ago

I'm getting this using curl_error() `Warning: curl_error() expects exactly 1 parameter, 0 given in C:\wamp\www`

Pekka Over a year ago

@andrew see the manual link for how it's used. echo curl_error($ch);

hellomello Over a year ago

Nice, I figured it out. Thanks!

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