cURL and fputs fallback POST reuqest example function

function post ($data, $type = null) {
    if ( is_null($type) ) {
        $url = $this->rest_endpoint;
    }

    if ( !is_null($this->custom_post) ) {
        return call_user_func($this->custom_post, $url, $data);
    }

    if ( !preg_match("|http://(.*?)(/.*)|", $url, $matches) ) {
        die('There was some problem figuring out your endpoint');
    }

    if ( function_exists('curl_init') ) {
        // Has curl. Use it!
        $curl = curl_init($this->rest_endpoint);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        $response = curl_exec($curl);
        curl_close($curl);
    } else {
        // Use sockets.
        foreach ( $data as $key => $value ) {
            $data[$key] = $key . '=' . urlencode($value);
        }
        $data = implode('&', $data);

        $fp = @pfsockopen($matches[1], 80);
        if (!$fp) {
            die('Could not connect to the web service');
        }
        fputs ($fp,'POST ' . $matches[2] . " HTTP/1.1\n");
        fputs ($fp,'Host: ' . $matches[1] . "\n");
        fputs ($fp,"Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\n");
        fputs ($fp,"Content-length: ".strlen($data)."\n");
        fputs ($fp,"Connection: close\r\n\r\n");
        fputs ($fp,$data . "\n\n");
        $response = "";
        while(!feof($fp)) {
            $response .= fgets($fp, 1024);
        }
        fclose ($fp);
        $chunked = false;
        $http_status = trim(substr($response, 0, strpos($response, "\n")));
        if ( $http_status != 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK' ) {
            die('The web service endpoint returned a "' . $http_status . '" response');
        }
        if ( strpos($response, 'Transfer-Encoding: chunked') !== false ) {
            $temp = trim(strstr($response, "\r\n\r\n"));
            $response = '';
            $length = trim(substr($temp, 0, strpos($temp, "\r")));
            while ( trim($temp) != "0" && ($length = trim(substr($temp, 0, strpos($temp, "\r")))) != "0" ) {
                $response .= trim(substr($temp, strlen($length)+2, hexdec($length)));
                $temp = trim(substr($temp, strlen($length) + 2 + hexdec($length)));
            }
        } elseif ( strpos($response, 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK') !== false ) {
            $response = trim(strstr($response, "\r\n\r\n"));
        }
    }
    return $response;
}