PHP Get XML from Remote URL with Authentication - 403 Error

Question

I have a URL which gives an xml output. It requires a username and password which I can access through a browser using the format:

http://username:password@url.com

However when I try to access it through a php file I get a 403 forbidden:

$url = "http://username:password@url.com";


$xml = @simplexml_load_file($url);
print_r($http_response_header);

I have tried using curl and setting the user agent to a browser but this still doesn't echo the data.

$username = "user";
$password = "pass";
$process = curl_init("http://user:pass@url.com/feed?feed_id=1");
//curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/xml'));
curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');
curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $username . ":" . $password);
curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 30);
curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
$return = curl_exec($process);
echo $return;

I also tried using pear's http request 2, which also gives a 403 forbidden

Is the server i'm trying to access refusing all connections via PHP or is there a way around this? Thanks!

try removing the user:pass in curl init and also add a browser user agent to header. — Josnidhin, May 18 '12 at 09:20
curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 GTB5'); something like this. — Josnidhin, May 18 '12 at 09:22
Since you are already setting up the `CURLOPT_PASSWD` option, i would suggest to remove `user:pass@` **from** `$process = curl_init("http://user:pass@url.com/feed?feed_id=1");` — web-nomad, May 18 '12 at 10:56

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 21 '12 at 13:17

Seems the page you are requesting is very picky. Make sure to send all the headers exactly as the browser does.

Install Firebug in Firefox, or use Chrome's inspector
Write down all the headers that get sent when you request the protected page
Send the headers from your php script exactly as the browser does.
If it does not work, use Wireshark to verify that you really got it right.

I suspect the page also looks for a user-agent header or so, not only the password.

Another problem could be that you have a different IP than your server, and that only your IP is whitelisted.

PHP Get XML from Remote URL with Authentication - 403 Error

1 Answers1