How do I get exchange rates in PHP?

[cahthuranag]

What's the simplest way to fetch live exchange rates in PHP?

Answer

Install the official PHP SDK via Composer:

composer require exchangerateapi/sdk

Usage:

use ExchangeRateAPI\ExchangeRateAPI;

$client = new ExchangeRateAPI('era_live_YOUR_KEY');

// Get exchange rate
$rate = $client->getRate('USD', 'EUR');
echo "1 USD = {$rate[0]['rate']} EUR\n";

// Convert amount
$result = $client->convert('USD', 'EUR', 100);
echo "\$100 = €{$result['result']}\n";

// Get historical rates
$history = $client->getHistoricalRates('USD', 'EUR', '30d');
foreach ($history['rates'] as $point) {
    echo "{$point['time']}: {$point['rate']}\n";
}

Requires only PHP 7.4+ with ext-curl and ext-json (both ship with standard PHP). No external Composer dependencies.

Get your free API key: exchange-rateapi.com/register

[cahthuranag]

Install the official PHP SDK via Composer:

composer require exchangerateapi/sdk

Usage:

use ExchangeRateAPI\ExchangeRateAPI;

$client = new ExchangeRateAPI('era_live_YOUR_KEY');

// Get exchange rate
$rate = $client->getRate('USD', 'EUR');
echo "1 USD = {$rate[0]['rate']} EUR\n";

// Convert amount
$result = $client->convert('USD', 'EUR', 100);
echo "\$100 = €{$result['result']}\n";

// Get historical rates
$history = $client->getHistoricalRates('USD', 'EUR', '30d');
foreach ($history['rates'] as $point) {
    echo "{$point['time']}: {$point['rate']}\n";
}

Requires only PHP 7.4+ with ext-curl and ext-json (both ship with standard PHP). No external Composer dependencies.

Get your free API key: exchange-rateapi.com/register