What are the differences between sending data in the URL and in the body of a POST request in PHP?

Sending data in the URL means that the data is appended to the URL as query parameters, visible to users and limited in size. Sending data in the body of a POST request means that the data is sent in the request body, not visible in the URL, and allows for larger amounts of data to be transmitted securely. 

// Sending data in the URL
$url = 'https://example.com/api?param1=value1&param2=value2';
$response = file_get_contents($url);

// Sending data in the body of a POST request
$data = array('param1' => 'value1', 'param2' => 'value2');
$options = array(
    'http' => array(
        'method'  => 'POST',
        'header'  => 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
        'content' => http_build_query($data)
    )
);
$context  = stream_context_create($options);
$response = file_get_contents('https://example.com/api', false, $context);

Keywords

GET POST URL parameters request body form data

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