How to consume RapidAPI endpoints in Laravel Controller methods?

Other Questions RapidAPI
1

I’m working on a Laravel project where I need to call an external API from RapidAPI. I’ve been trying to use unirest for making HTTP requests but I keep running into issues. The documentation seemed straightforward, yet I’m facing errors during my implementation. Are there any better alternatives to unirest for API calls in Laravel? Any help would be appreciated!

Here’s what I have in my controller:

public function create(Request $request)
{
    Profile::create(
        request()->validate([
            'first_name' => ['required','max:255'],
            'last_name' => ['required','max:255'],
        ],
        [
            'first_name.required' => 'First name is required',
            'last_name.required' => 'Last name is required'
        ]));

        $headers = array('Accept' => 'application/json');

        $result = Unirest\Request::post("RAPID_API_ENDPOINT",
          array(
            "X-RapidAPI-Key" => "YOUR_API_KEY"
          )
        );
            dd($result);

        return view("success");
}

The error I’m getting:

Class ‘App\Http\Controllers\Unirest\Request’ not found

2

first run composer require unirest/unirest-php to install unirest, but honestly just use guzzle instead - it’s way better. Install with composer require guzzlehttp/guzzle then:

$client = new \GuzzleHttp\Client();
$response = $client->post('endpoint', ['headers' => ['X-RapidAPI-Key' => 'key']]);

Works every time for me.

3

That namespace error means unirest isn’t installed or imported correctly. But honestly, I’d just use cURL instead - it’s built into PHP and you don’t need extra dependencies. I’ve been doing this with RapidAPI calls for over two years in production:

$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, [
    CURLOPT_URL => 'RAPID_API_ENDPOINT',
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_API_KEY',
        'Accept: application/json'
    ]
]);

$response = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
$data = json_decode($response, true);

You get full control over requests and error handling, plus you won’t run into those annoying composer conflicts that third-party HTTP libraries sometimes cause.

4

Ditch unirest and use Laravel’s built-in HTTP client. I had the same headaches with unirest and switching fixed everything. Add use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http; at the top of your controller, then replace your unirest code:

$response = Http::withHeaders([
    'X-RapidAPI-Key' => 'YOUR_API_KEY',
    'Accept' => 'application/json'
])->post('RAPID_API_ENDPOINT', [
    // your post data here
]);

$data = $response->json();

The HTTP client’s been around since Laravel 7 and handles timeouts, retries, and errors way better than unirest. No extra packages to install and no namespace headaches. Way cleaner.