Basic PHP curl commands with JSON output

<?php
header('Content-Type: application/json');

include("auth.php");
$baseURL = "https://example.com/Application";
$loginUrl = "$baseURL/Login/process";
$start = $_GET['start'];

$reqURL = "$baseURL/Ajax/DayNotes/GetByDate/?start=$start";
//init curl
$ch = curl_init();

//Set the URL to work with
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $loginUrl);

// ENABLE HTTP POST
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

//Set the post parameters
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'username='.$username.'&password='.$password);

//Handle cookies for the login
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, 'cookie.txt');

//Setting CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER variable to 1 will force cURL
//not to print out the results of its query.
//Instead, it will return the results as a string return value
//from curl_exec() instead of the usual true/false.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

//execute the request (the login)
$store = curl_exec($ch);

//the login is now done and you can continue to get the
//protected content.

//set the URL to the protected file
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $reqURL);

//execute the request
$content = curl_exec($ch);

//save the data to disk
//file_put_contents('test', $content);
echo json_encode($content);
?>