<?php
function httpRequest($url, $hostName, array $params){
    $postParams = array();
    foreach ($params as $key=>$val) {
        $post_params[] = $key.'='.rawurlencode($val);
    }

    $postString = implode('&', $post_params);
    $result = '';
    if (function_exists('curl_init')) {
        $ch = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Host: ' . $hostName));
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postString);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'DEMO.COM PREMIUM PHP5 Client ver: ' . phpversion());
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 2);
        $result = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);
    } else {
        $context = array('http' => array('method' => 'POST',
            'header' => 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded'    . "\r\n".
            'Host: '.$hostName . "\r\n".
            'User-Agent: TEST.COM BC Test PHP5 Client ver: ' . phpversion() . "\r\n".
            'Content-length: ' . strlen($postString),
                'content' => $postString));
        $contextId = stream_context_create($context);
        $handle = fopen($url, 'r', false, $contextId);
        if ($handle) {
            while (!feof($handle)) $result .= fgets($sock, 4096);
            fclose($handle);
        }   
    }   

    return $result;
}