Using cURL to download a site's HTML source, but getting different file than intended

Question

I'm trying to use cURL and PHP to download the HTML source (as it appears in the browser) of here. But instead of the actual source code, this is returned instead (a meta refresh link set to 0).

<html>
    <head><title>Object moved</title></head>
    <body>
        <h2>Object moved to <a href="https://login.live.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&amp;rpsnv=11&amp;checkda=1&amp;ct=1321044850&amp;rver=6.1.6195.0&amp;wp=MBI&amp;wreply=http:%2F%2Fwww.windowsphone.com%2Fen-US%2Fapps%2Fea39f002-ac30-e011-854c-00237de2db9e&amp;lc=1033&amp;id=268289">here</a>.
        </h2>
    </body>
</html>

I'm trying to spoof the referral header to be the site, but it seems I'm doing it wrong. Code is below. Any suggestions? Thanks

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/ea39f002-ac30-e011-854c-00237de2db9e');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.897.0 Safari/535.6'); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION, CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, "http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/ea39f002-ac30-e011-854c-00237de2db9e");

$html = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

I've got a feeling I answered this one before: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8046907/how-come-i-cant-download-this-webpage-in-python/ — flesk, Nov 11 '11 at 21:09

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

7

Add the curl option to follow redirects:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);

If it is a meta refresh and not an HTTP moved header, see: PHP: Can CURL follow meta redirects

As mentioned by flesk, you may also need to store the cookies.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

Community

1
1

answered Nov 11 '11 at 21:03

jli

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I'm writing the HTML returned to a separate file (to read from later). When I set FOLLOWLOCATION to true, the file became blank. – user954912 Nov 11 '11 at 21:08
This works fine if the redirect is just in the headers. I just tested it with your code, and the page returns a 200 OK with a meta refresh tag. See my edit. – jli Nov 11 '11 at 21:10
excellent, I'll check it out. Sorry I'm new to all this HTTP/spoofing/cURL – user954912 Nov 11 '11 at 21:15

Nikolay Baluk · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-11T21:15:26.477

$ch = curl_init();
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/ea39f002-ac30-e011-854c-00237de2db9e');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.897.0 Safari/535.6'); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, "cookie.txt");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, "cookie.txt");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 30);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, "http://www.windowsphone.com");
$html = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $html;

This doesn't fix it. You need the follow location option to be set to true. — jli, Nov 11 '11 at 21:12

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 11 '11 at 21:14

The problem isn't the referrer but that you need to enable cookies for it to work.

Try something like this:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, "cookie.txt");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, "cookie.txt");

You have to query the page twice. First allow redirects to get the cookie from login.live.com, then query again with the cookie set.

Using cURL to download a site's HTML source, but getting different file than intended

3 Answers3

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