PHP curl resets content-length if CURLOPT_POST is set with curl_setopt_array?

Question

It looks like curl_setopt_array is different from just multiple invocations of curl_setopt. Consider this script:

$ch = curl_init('http://www.stackoverflow.com/'); [options] curl_exec($ch); var_dump(curl_getinfo($ch));

Now it sends a proper request if [options] are one of these:

curl_setopt_array($ch, array( CURLOPT_POST => true, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => array('a' => 'b'), ));

or

curl_setopt_array($ch, array( CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => array('a' => 'b'), ));

or

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'a=b'); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

BUT NOT this way:

curl_setopt_array($ch, array( CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => array('a' => 'b'), CURLOPT_POST => true, ));

It seems that the content-length is reset if CURLOPT_POST is set after CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS. Except it works ok if set with curl_setopt instead of curl_setopt_array.

Why is this?

Excellent work tracking this down. Now I can stop banging my head against the wall and upload photos through Facebook's API. — grossvogel
– grossvogel, Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 0:27

Adam Hopkinson · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-02 12:03:52Z

When you specify CURLOPT_POST, the post is sent as application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

But, from the curl_setopt manual page:

Passing an array to CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS will encode the data as multipart/form-data, while passing a URL-encoded string will encode the data as application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

So when you do

curl_setopt_array($ch, array( CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => array('a' => 'b'), // multipart/form-data CURLOPT_POST => true, // application/x-www-form-urlencoded ));

The data is being set as mulpart/form-data (by setting CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS to an array) and then reset as application/x-www-form-urlencoded (by setting CURLOPT_POST to true).

The other examples work because you're not changing the type once the data is set.

but when I do the same with curl_setopt (last example), why does it work?
because both options set the type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded, so the data is not lost
Oh, I see, my bad. At this point I think that it is better to just omit CURLOPT_POST at all, the data type will be set based on post fields. Is that correct?

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