Posting XML Data from PHP & curl

There is a frequent need to post xml data to a url. Below is shown an example which lets you post xml data using CURL.

<?php

$url = "http://www.some_domain.com";

$post_string = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rootNode>
    <innerNode>
    </innerNode>
</rootNode>';


$header  = "POST HTTP/1.0 \r\n";
$header .= "Content-type: text/xml \r\n";
$header .= "Content-length: ".strlen($post_string)." \r\n";
$header .= "Content-transfer-encoding: text \r\n";
$header .= "Connection: close \r\n\r\n"; 
$header .= $post_string;

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 4);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, $header);

$data = curl_exec($ch); 

if(curl_errno($ch))
    print curl_error($ch);
else
    curl_close($ch);

?>