How to send a POST request in PHP: a complete guide with examples

Hello everyone! I'm a beginner in PHP and I can't figure out how to send POST requests. I'm writing a small parser for my project, and I need to send data to an external API and get a response. I tried using file_get_contents with a context, but something went wrong.\n\nHere's my code:\n\n```php\n$data = array('name' => 'Ivan', 'email' => 'ivan@example.com');\n$options = array(\n 'http' => array(\n 'method' => 'POST',\n 'content' => $data\n )\n);\n$context = stream_context_create($options);\n$result = file_get_contents('https://api.example.com/submit', false, $context);\necho $result;\n```\n\nBut I get an empty string or an error as output. I've scoured tons of forums — some recommend cURL, others say I need to serialize the data. I'm completely confused. Please advise how to do it correctly.