a simple func to do curl json requests for those living in the stone age without php streams

functions.php

<?php

function doCurlJSONReq($url, $data = null, $method = '', $returnString = false) {
	//echo $url . "\n";
	$ch = curl_init($url);
	if($data !== null) {
		if($method === '') $method = 'POST';
		if(!is_string($data)) $data = json_encode($data);
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json', 'Content-length: '.strlen($data)));
	}

	if($method !== '') curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, $method);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

	$res = @curl_exec($ch);
	curl_close($ch);
	if($returnString) return $res;
	$res = json_decode($res, true);
	return is_array($res) ? $res : array();
}