Upload file to zendesk with PHP

file-upload.php

<?php

$url = "http://skipjack.zendesk.com/uploads.xml?filename=dropbox1.html";
$file = fopen("dropbox1.html", "r");
$size = filesize($file);
$header= array('Content-type:  application/binary' );
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "skip@youremail.net:passwrod");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST ,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $header);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS ,$file);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST ,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_INFILE, $file);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_INFILESIZE, strlen($file));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION ,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER ,1); // DO NOT RETURN HTTP HEADERS 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER ,1); // RETURN THE CONTENTS OF THE CALL 
$token = curl_exec($ch);

?>

This is the response you get

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/0.8.53
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:23:23 GMT
Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
Status: 200 OK
ETag: "517caa53231c26c5c89693c3c1430db4"
X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7
X-Runtime: 1197
Content-Length: 116
X-API-Deprecated: Please use /api/v1/uploads.xml
Set-Cookie: _zendesk_session=BAh7DCIcd2FyZGVuLnVzZXIuZGVmYXVsdC5rZXlpAwH8VzoMYWNjb3VudGkCMjs6DWF1dGhfdmlhIhJCYXNpY1N0cmF0ZWd5OhVhdXRoZW50aWNhdGVkX2F0bCsH%2BjYeTiITd2FyZGVuLm1lc3NhZ2V7ADoPc2Vzc2lvbl9pZCIlODZjN2JmOTdhNGM5NTQ0Y2IyYmVmZDNiNGM5OTA0NzE6B2lkIhVlbDRsbzltNHotYXphZmNy--bbe95edc34135ef88c785762e5b89ee9941a84d2; path=/; HttpOnly
Set-Cookie: oid_user=; path=/; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0, must-revalidate
X-Zendesk-API-Version: v1

53777038

Use the token in the next step to add to the ticket

I tried this with their V2 API and the uploaded files didn't contain the correct data - when I changed it a bit to use POSTFIELDS instead of INFILE it managed to work (not sure if this is the only way, or if there are other changes I could have made to the sample above).

What worked for me:

    // basic settings for your Zendesk
    $userName = 'youruser@example.com';
    $apiKey = 'apiKeyFromZD';

    // upload file info
    $fileName = 'myfile.txt';
    $filePath = '/full/path/to/myfile.txt';
    $token = NULL; // set to previously returned token to upload multiple files in 1 comment

    $url = 'https://yourdomain.zendesk.com/api/v2/uploads.json?filename='.urlencode($fileName);
    $url .= (is_null($token)) ? '' : '&token='.$token;
    $file = fopen($filePath, "r");
    $size = filesize($filePath);

    $ch = curl_init($this->zdURL.$url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $userName."/token:".$apiKey);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-type: application/binary'));
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION ,1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); // DO NOT RETURN HTTP HEADERS
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER ,1); // RETURN THE CONTENTS OF THE CALL
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, array($fileName => "@".$filePath));
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "MozillaXYZ/1.0");
    $output = curl_exec($ch);
    $code = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
    fclose($file);
    curl_close($ch);

    if ($code !== 200 && $code !== 201)
      {
        return 'Status code returned was '.$code.'!';
      }

    $decoded = json_decode($output);
    return $decoded;

Looks like you're calling "curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST ,1);" two times: lines 10 and 13.

In 2023, the above code was not really working for me... it was almost working, uploading something, and returning JSON, but the uploaded image was blank. In the end, this is the only combination of CURL options that would work for me:

$fileName = 'test.png';
$filePath = 'test.png';

$url = 'https://test.zendesk.com/api/v2/uploads.json?filename=' . urlencode($fileName);
$file = fopen($filePath, "r");
$mimeContentType = mime_content_type($file);
$size = filesize($filePath);


$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER ,true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST ,true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, file_get_contents($filePath));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Content-type: {$mimeContentType}"));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "test@test.com/token:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX");
$output = curl_exec($ch);
$code = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
fclose($file);
curl_close($ch);