Web contents via CURL call

web-contents-curl.php

<?php
/**
* Opens an URL with POST parameter and keeps quiet. Useful to post the data.
* @todo Make sure curl is initialized on the server, otherwise, the sytem may not perform
* @todo Handle $parameters if it is a multi dimentional array
*/
function web_contents($url='http://', $parameters_associative=array(), $fetch_data=false)
{
	$fetch_data = ($fetch_data===true);

	$parameters_key_value = array();
	foreach($parameters_associative as $key => $value)
	{
		// assumes single dimensional
		$parameters_key_value[$key]="{$key}=".($value);
	}
	
	$ch = curl_init();
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'User Agent');
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, 'http://domain.com/');
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, implode('&', $parameters_key_value));

	/**
	* Do we need the data back or just need to inform the URL
	* In case of API information, just send a notification to the server and do NOT wait for the completion.
	* When data is required, it may take longer time to complete receiving the total output.
	*/
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, $fetch_data);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $fetch_data?100:10);

	$response_html = curl_exec($ch);
	curl_close($ch);

	return $response_html;
}
?>