What is the purpose of php curl_exec?

In PHP, the curl_exec() function is used to execute a cURL session. The cURL (Client URL Library) is a tool and library used for transferring data, supporting various protocols such as HTTP, FTP, and SMTP.

More specifically, the function curl_exec() is used to carry out a cURL session that was previously initialized using curl_init(), and it returns the result of the execution. Typically, you can use the function curl_setopt() to set various cURL options such as the URL, request headers, request method, and then use curl_exec() to send the request and receive the response.

Here is a simple example demonstrating how to make a simple HTTP request using curl_init(), curl_setopt(), and curl_exec().

// 初始化 cURL 会话
$ch = curl_init();

// 设置请求的 URL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://www.example.com/api/data");

// 执行 cURL 会话并获取响应
$result = curl_exec($ch);

// 关闭 cURL 会话
curl_close($ch);

// 处理获取到的响应数据
echo $result;

在上面的例子中，我们首先初始化了一个 cURL 会话，然后设置了请求的 URL，接着使用 curl_exec() 执行了请求并获取了响应数据。最后，关闭了 cURL 会话，并处理了获取到的响应数据。

As a result, the function curl_exec() is used to execute a pre-set cURL session and returns the response data for further processing or display.