Toolpaper

Send form-urlencoded with cURL in PHP

Paste a curl command that sends form-urlencoded and get idiomatic PHP code. We pick the right serialization for ext-curl and set the correct Content-Type.

Quick answer

To convert a cURL command to PHP, paste it into the Toolpaper workbench below. It parses the command in your browser and emits idiomatic PHP code — headers, query string, request body, authentication (Bearer, Basic, API key), and cookies are all wired up automatically. No data is uploaded; conversion is fully client-side.

Prefer a different target? See the full cURL to PHP reference, or jump to the same guide in JavaScript, Node.js, or Python.

InputcURL command
MethodPOST·Headers1·Body30 B· Chars 139
OutputPHP · curl(ext-curl)
<?php
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.example.com/login");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, [
    "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
]);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "username=ada&password=lovelace");
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $response;
Inspect

Example

A representative curl command for this scenario. Paste your own above to convert an exact match.

curl input
curl -X POST https://api.example.com/login \
  -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
  -d "username=ada&password=lovelace"

Implementation notes

  • Content-Type is detected from -H headers first, then inferred from the body shape when the header is missing.
  • application/x-www-form-urlencoded bodies are decoded into structured pairs so ext-curl owns the encoding — you never double-encode a value.
  • Charset directives on Content-Type (e.g. application/json; charset=utf-8) survive the round trip.

Common mistakes

  • Setting Content-Type manually and then also using ext-curl's helper — you end up with duplicate headers or the wrong one wins.
  • Mixing form encoding with JSON headers — the server rejects with 400 and it's easy to miss in code review.
  • Trusting the browser DevTools "Copy as cURL" to preserve charset — it often drops it. Clean panel restores common defaults.

Common questions

How is form-urlencoded encoded in the generated PHP?
application/x-www-form-urlencoded bodies map to the right primitive in each language — data= in Python, url.Values in Go, FormUrlEncodedContent in C#.
Does it preserve Content-Type?
Yes. The Content-Type header is honored and matched against the body so serialization stays consistent.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Parsing and generation happen entirely in your browser.

More payload types in PHP

PHP hub →

JSON in PHP

/how-to/send-json-with-curl-in-php

multipart form-data in PHP

/how-to/send-multipart-with-curl-in-php

XML in PHP

/how-to/send-xml-with-curl-in-php

GraphQL in PHP

/how-to/send-graphql-with-curl-in-php

The same guide in other languages

All guides →

In JavaScript

/how-to/send-form-with-curl-in-javascript

In Node.js

/how-to/send-form-with-curl-in-node

In Python

/how-to/send-form-with-curl-in-python

In Go

/how-to/send-form-with-curl-in-go

In Ruby

/how-to/send-form-with-curl-in-ruby

In Rust

/how-to/send-form-with-curl-in-rust

In Java

/how-to/send-form-with-curl-in-java

In Kotlin

/how-to/send-form-with-curl-in-kotlin

Full PHP reference on the cURL to PHP hub, or open the main converter for all 18 targets.