Here is the relevant section of code from [stack.PHP](https://stackapps.com/questions/826/stack-php-clean-easy-to-use-wrapper-for-php).

    $ch = curl_init();
        
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_ENCODING,'gzip');  // Needed by API
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
        
    $data = curl_exec($ch);