This is a basic overview of how you use CURL to connect to an API

gistfile1.txt

// Using GET
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 3);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

// Using POST
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($array_of_post_data));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 5);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);