PHP script to read html after logging in

Question

I am trying to create a php script which logs into a website and then navigates to (potentially multiple) web pages which require a user to be logged in to see them. I think I have successfully logged in using cURL but I don't know how to "stay logged in" to read file contents after having logged in. I suspect my issue has something to do with using the same cookies file but I am unsure. This is what I currently have:

<?
//login form action url
$url="https://randomwebsite.com/users/sign_in"; 
$postinfo = "utf8=%E2%9C%93&authenticity_token=ncgU2234iEMObg3334d3Iag%2BPBrmEerybFZ3X2fvVsUTmpjkPDQMgteeGlVDxFRfHjmHbvIYaTchvM2psKFzI%2BAHIpCw%3D%3D&user%5Botp_attempt%5D=step_1&user%5Blocale%5D=en&user%5Blogin%5D=randomuser&user%5Bpassword%5D=123456";

$cookie_file_path = "cookies1.txt";

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookie_file_path);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $cookie_file_path);  

//set the cookie the site has for certain features, this is optional
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIE, "cookiename=0");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT,
    "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 0);

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postinfo);
$curlexecresponse = curl_exec($ch);
//echo("\ncurlexecresponse: " . $curlexecresponse);

// Now that we're logged in we can finally read the web pages we want to...
$url2 = "url to members only page";
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url2);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 0);

$data = curl_exec($ch);

echo("\n\n data is: " . $data); // this is empty

curl_close($ch);
?>

How can I read the HTML in pages after having logged in?

see if this help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13020404/keeping-session-alive-with-curl-and-php — BetaDev, Jan 24 '17 at 07:23

Tali Luvhengo · Answer 1 · 2017-01-24T09:12:13.050

0

You need to send the cookie with every request after login in.

$url2 = "url to members only page";
//Add this line
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $cookie_file_path);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url2);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 0);

edited Jan 24 '17 at 09:12

answered Jan 24 '17 at 07:27

Tali Luvhengo

349
1
15

For some reason the curl_exec() response is still coming back empty even after adding the line you mentioned – user2804881 Jan 24 '17 at 07:33
Hey I noticed the curl object in my line was wrong please use $ch and not $ch. I've edited the answer. – Tali Luvhengo Jan 24 '17 at 09:11
if there is still nothing coming back try "echo curl_error($ch)" to see if there is any errors being thrown. – Tali Luvhengo Jan 24 '17 at 09:12

PHP script to read html after logging in

1 Answers1