CURL

*** Initialize a cURL session
$ch = curl_init();

*** Set the URL that you want to GET by using the CURLOPT_URL option.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);

*** Set CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER so that the content is returned as a variable.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

*** Set CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION to true to follow redirects.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);

*** Timeout after 120 seconds
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT , 120);

*** Start counting time for response from BL API.
$time_start     = microtime(true);
$requestTime    = Carbon::now()->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

*** Execute the request.
$response   = curl_exec($ch);

*** End counting, and calculate time for response from BL API.
$time_end       = microtime(true);
$responseTime   = Carbon::now()->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$execution_time = ($time_end - $time_start)*1000;

*** Return a string containing the last error for the current session
$err  = curl_error($ch);

*** Close the cURL handle.
curl_close($ch);