Check if Curl is enabled on your webserver

At some point, you will find out that some scripts require you to have cURL extension enabled in your web server. well, how can you tell whether the CURL extension is enabled or compiled in your PHP?

Follow these steps to test:

1. open a blank text document. i will be using notepad in windows.
2. copy and paste this code into notepad and save it as testcurl.php 

<?php
echo '<pre>';
var_dump(curl_version());
echo '</pre>';
?>

3. IF IT FAILS:
if there was an error, then it means that you do not have this extension enabled. and you will see an error similar to this one: Fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_version() in testcurl.php on line 2

HOW TO FIX IT:
open you php.ini file and look for this line: extension=php_curl.dll

this is how my server was:

;Windows Extensions
;Note that MySQL and ODBC support is now built in, so no dll is needed for it.


;extension=php_adt.dll
;extension=php_apd.dll
;extension=php_blenc.dll
;extension=php_bz2.dll
;extension=php_bz2_filter.dll
;extension=php_cpdf.dll
;extension=php_crack.dll
;extension=php_curl.dll
;extension=php_date.dll
;extension=php_db.dll
;extension=php_dba.dll
;extension=php_dbase.dll
;extension=php_dbx.dll
;extension=php_dio.dll
;extension=php_domxml.dll
;extension=php_exif.dll
;extension=php_fdf.dll
;extension=php_ffi.dll
;extension=php_filepro.dll
;extension=php_fribidi.dll
extension=php_gd2.dll

If you notice, i have a semi-colon (;) before extension=php_curl.dll
so all you have to do is to remove that semi-colon save your php.ini file and restart your server. now try to open your testcurl.php file with your browser and this time you should not get this error anymore.

4. IF SUCCESS.
if you have extension=php_curl.dll enabled, then you will see something like this: 

array(9) {
["version_number"]=>
int(461570)
["age"]=>
int(1)
["features"]=>
int(540)
["ssl_version_number"]=>
int(9465919)
["version"]=>
string(6) "7.11.2"
["host"]=>
string(13) "i386-pc-win32"
["ssl_version"]=>
string(15) " OpenSSL/0.9.7c"
["libz_version"]=>
string(5) "1.1.4"
["protocols"]=>
array(9) {
[0]=>
string(3) "ftp"
[1]=>
string(6) "gopher"
[2]=>
string(6) "telnet"
[3]=>
string(4) "dict"
[4]=>
string(4) "ldap"
[5]=>
string(4) "http"
[6]=>
string(4) "file"
[7]=>
string(5) "https"
[8]=>
string(4) "ftps"
}
}