How do I make a simple PHP API handler for Digital Ocean?

Hi all,

I’ve having some trouble understanding the API, in the past with other API’s I’ve just used a simple PHP with curl script to action a specific task on a service. I don’t need a full library and the Digital Ocean has more dependencies than I care to count…

For some reason the DO API is not working with a simple script like this while others do, I must be missing something?

function basic_api_handle($key, $method, $URI, $data) {

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
        'Authorization: Bearer '.$key,
        'Content-Type: application/json')
    );

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, $method);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $URI);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($data));

    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    if($result === false) error_log("API ERROR: Connection failure: $URI", 0);

    curl_close($ch);

    return json_decode($result, true);
}

var_dump(basic_api_handle($api_key, 'POST', 'https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/domains', array('name' => 'my-domain.tld', 'ip_address' => '1.2.3.4')));

This results in** “unprocessable_entity” **and “Name can’t be blank” - it suggests to me the data is not being sent correctly? although, as far as I can tell, it is…

I’ve also posted this on Stack Overflow but it may be to specific (Digital Ocean) to get any decent answers. I have setup a bounty for a solution too :) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43619504/how-do-i-make-a-simple-php-api-handler/43854037