How to properly send a POST request via cURL in PHP? Complete example with error handling

Hello everyone! I'm a beginner in PHP and trying to figure out how to send POST requests via cURL. I have a simple script that should send data to an external API, but I keep getting errors or an empty response.\n\nHere is my current code:\n\n```php\n 'Ivan',\n 'email' => 'ivan@example.com'\n);\n\n$ch = curl_init();\ncurl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);\ncurl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);\ncurl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);\n$response = curl_exec($ch);\ncurl_close($ch);\n\necho $response;\n?>\n```\n\nThe problem is that:\n1. Sometimes an empty response comes back\n2. There is no error handling — if the request fails, I don't know about it\n3. I don't understand how to properly send JSON instead of regular data\n4. On some