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Prerequisites

  • PHP 8.0+ with cURL extension
  • A Firecrawl API key — get one free

​
Search the web

Firecrawl works with PHP through the REST API using cURL. 
<?php
$apiKey = getenv('FIRECRAWL_API_KEY');

$ch = curl_init('https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/search');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'Authorization: Bearer ' . $apiKey,
        'Content-Type: application/json',
    ],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode([
        'query' => 'firecrawl web scraping',
        'limit' => 5,
    ]),
]);

$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$results = json_decode($response, true);
foreach ($results['data']['web'] as $result) {
    echo $result['title'] . ' - ' . $result['url'] . "\n";
}

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "web": [
      {
        "url": "https://docs.firecrawl.dev",
        "title": "Firecrawl Documentation",
        "markdown": "# Firecrawl\n\nFirecrawl is a web scraping API..."
      }
    ]
  }
}

​
Scrape a page

<?php
$ch = curl_init('https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/scrape');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'Authorization: Bearer ' . $apiKey,
        'Content-Type: application/json',
    ],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode([
        'url' => 'https://example.com',
    ]),
]);

$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$data = json_decode($response, true);
echo $data['data']['markdown'];

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "markdown": "# Example Domain\n\nThis domain is for use in illustrative examples...",
    "metadata": {
      "title": "Example Domain",
      "sourceURL": "https://example.com"
    }
  }
}

​
Interact with a page

Start a browser session, interact with the page using natural-language prompts, then close the session.

​
Step 1 — Scrape to start a session

<?php
$ch = curl_init('https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/scrape');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'Authorization: Bearer ' . $apiKey,
        'Content-Type: application/json',
    ],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode([
        'url' => 'https://www.amazon.com',
        'formats' => ['markdown'],
    ]),
]);

$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$scrapeResult = json_decode($response, true);
$scrapeId = $scrapeResult['data']['metadata']['scrapeId'];
echo "scrapeId: $scrapeId\n";

​
Step 2 — Send interactions

<?php
$interactUrl = "https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/scrape/$scrapeId/interact";
$headers = [
    'Authorization: Bearer ' . $apiKey,
    'Content-Type: application/json',
];

// Search for a product
$ch = curl_init($interactUrl);
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => $headers,
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode([
        'prompt' => 'Search for iPhone 16 Pro Max',
    ]),
]);

$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $response . "\n";

// Click on the first result
$ch = curl_init($interactUrl);
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => $headers,
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode([
        'prompt' => 'Click on the first result and tell me the price',
    ]),
]);

$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $response . "\n";

​
Step 3 — Stop the session

<?php
$ch = curl_init($interactUrl);
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'DELETE',
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'Authorization: Bearer ' . $apiKey,
    ],
]);

curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo "Session stopped\n";

​
Reusable helper class

For repeated use, wrap the API in a class: 
<?php
class Firecrawl
{
    private string $apiKey;
    private string $baseUrl = 'https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2';

    public function __construct(string $apiKey)
    {
        $this->apiKey = $apiKey;
    }

    private function post(string $endpoint, array $payload): array
    {
        $ch = curl_init($this->baseUrl . $endpoint);
        curl_setopt_array($ch, [
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
            CURLOPT_POST => true,
            CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
                'Authorization: Bearer ' . $this->apiKey,
                'Content-Type: application/json',
            ],
            CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode($payload),
        ]);

        $response = curl_exec($ch);
        $httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
        curl_close($ch);

        if ($httpCode >= 400) {
            throw new \RuntimeException("Firecrawl API error: HTTP $httpCode");
        }

        return json_decode($response, true);
    }

    public function scrape(string $url, array $options = []): array
    {
        return $this->post('/scrape', array_merge(['url' => $url], $options));
    }

    public function search(string $query, int $limit = 5): array
    {
        return $this->post('/search', ['query' => $query, 'limit' => $limit]);
    }
}

// Usage
$app = new Firecrawl(getenv('FIRECRAWL_API_KEY'));
$result = $app->scrape('https://example.com');
echo $result['data']['markdown'];

​
Next steps

Search docs

Search the web and get full page content

Scrape docs

All scrape options including formats, actions, and proxies

Interact docs

Click, fill forms, and extract dynamic content

API Reference

Complete REST API documentation