How to consume RapidAPI endpoints in Laravel controllers?

[Claire29]

I’m working on a Laravel project where I need to call an external API from RapidAPI. I’ve been trying to use unirest library but I keep getting errors. I followed the documentation but something isn’t working right. Maybe there’s a better way to do this? Any help would be great!

Here’s what I have in my controller:

public function create(Request $request)
{
    User::create(
        request()->validate([
            'first_name' => ['required','max:255'],
            'last_name' => ['required','max:255'],
        ],
        [
            'first_name.required' => 'Please enter your first name',
            'last_name.required' => 'Please enter your last name'
        ]));

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

        $response = Unirest\Request::post("ENDPOINT_URL",
          array(
            "X-RapidAPI-Key" => "MY_API_KEY"
          )
        );
            dd($response);

        return view("success");
}

The error I’m getting:

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

[AdventurousHiker17]

yeah, that unirest namespace thing is annoying. add use Unirest\Request; at the top of your controller or just use \Unirest\Request::post() instead. but honestly, guzzle’s probably better for rapidapi calls than unirest anyway.

[sophiac]

Ditch unirest and use Laravel’s HTTP client instead. Way cleaner and works great with RapidAPI. I ran into the same problems with unirest when I first started using RapidAPI.

Replace your API call with this:

$response = Http::withHeaders([
    'X-RapidAPI-Key' => 'YOUR_API_KEY',
    'X-RapidAPI-Host' => 'your-api-host.rapidapi.com',
    'Content-Type' => 'application/json'
])->post('ENDPOINT_URL', [
    // your payload here
]);

$data = $response->json();

Add use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http; at the top of your controller. The HTTP facade works in Laravel 7+ and handles everything for you. Way more reliable than third-party libraries.

[OwenNebula55]

I’ve been using RapidAPI for 2 years and cURL is still my favorite for Laravel controllers. It’s reliable and doesn’t need extra dependencies. Here’s my usual setup:

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, [
    CURLOPT_URL => 'YOUR_RAPIDAPI_ENDPOINT',
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_API_KEY',
        'X-RapidAPI-Host: your-host.rapidapi.com',
        'Content-Type: application/json'
    ],
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode($your_data)
]);

$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);
curl_close($curl);

if ($err) {
    // handle error
} else {
    $data = json_decode($response, true);
}

You get complete control over requests and error handling. Works with any Laravel version too - no compatibility headaches.