Sending HTTP POST Request to Zapier Webhook Using cURL in PHP

Other Questions Zapier
1

I’m having trouble sending data to a Zapier webhook using PHP cURL. The webhook works fine when I access it directly through the browser with GET parameters, but my PHP cURL POST request isn’t working.

Here’s my current PHP code:

<?php
    // Set up cURL session
    $ch = curl_init();
    
    // Build POST data string
    $postData = 'user_id=' . $_POST['user_id'] . '&title=' . $_POST['title'] . '&user_email=' . $_POST['user_email'];
    
    // Configure cURL settings
    $options = array(
        CURLOPT_URL => 'https://zapier.com/hooks/catch/n/xyz123',
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
        CURLOPT_POST => true,
        CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $postData,
        CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
            'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
        )
    );
    
    // Apply settings
    curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);
    
    // Execute request
    $response = curl_exec($ch);
    
    // Clean up
    curl_close($ch);
    
    print $response;
?>

The script runs without errors and shows a success message, but Zapier doesn’t receive the data. I noticed that Zapier’s documentation shows JSON format for POST requests. Should I be sending JSON data instead of form-encoded data? What am I missing in my implementation?

2

You’re right about the JSON format. Had this same problem last year with Zapier webhooks. Zapier wants JSON payload for POST requests, not form-encoded data. Use json_encode() on your data array for $postData, and change the content-type header to application/json. Also add CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER with Content-Length header - this fixed my issues where the webhook looked successful but data wasn’t getting through. Check Zapier’s webhook history in their dashboard to see what they’re actually receiving.

3

yeah, zapier def prefers json for webhooks. try using json_encode() for your postfields and set content-type to application/json. also, don’t forget to add CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER with the json header. that should do it!

4

Yeah, it’s definitely the data format. Zapier webhooks need JSON for POST requests, but you’re missing another step. After switching to JSON with json_encode(), you need to handle the response properly. I had the same issue - everything looked fine but data wasn’t hitting the zap. Turned out I wasn’t checking for cURL errors. Add curl_error($ch) and curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE) to see what’s actually happening. Also, sanitize your POST data before encoding to JSON - unescaped characters will silently break the JSON structure. The webhook might return 200 OK but still reject malformed JSON.