'&' becomes '&' when trying to get contents from a URL

Question

I was running my WebServer for months with the same Algorithm where I got the content of a URL by using this line of code:

$response = file_get_contents('http://femoso.de:8019/api/2/getVendorLogin?' . http_build_query(array('vendor'=>$vendor,'user'=>$login,'pw'=>$pw),'','&'));

But now something must have changed as out of sudden it stopped working.

In earlier days the URL looked like it should have been:

http://femoso.de:8019/api/2/getVendorLogin?vendor=100&user=test&pw=test

but now I get an error in my nginx log saying that I requested the following URL which returned a 403

http://femoso.de:8019/api/2/getVendorLogin?vendor=100&user=test&pw=test

I know that something changed on the target server, but I think that shouldn't affect me or not?!

I already spent hours and hours of reading and searching through Google and Stackoverflow, but all the suggested ways as

urlencode() or htmlspecialchars() etc...

didn't work for me.

For your information, the environment is a zend application with a nginx server on my end and a php webservice with apache on the other end.

Like I said, it changed without any change on my side!

Thanks

Answer 1

Let's find out the culprit!

1) Is it http_build_query ? Try replacing:

'http://femoso.de:8019/api/2/getVendorLogin?' . http_build_query(array('vendor'=>$vendor,'user'=>$login,'pw'=>$pw)

with:

"http://femoso.de:8019/api/2/getVendorLogin?vendor={$vendor}&user={$login}&pw={$pw}"

2) Is some kind of post-processing in the place? Try replacing '&' with chr(38)

3) Maybe give a try and play a little bit with cURL?

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
    CURLOPT_URL => 'http://femoso.de:8019/api/2/getVendorLogin?' . http_build_query(array('vendor'=>$vendor,'user'=>$login,'pw'=>$pw),
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HEADER => true, // include response header in result
    //CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true, // uncomment to follow redirects
    CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT => true, // track request header, see var_dump below
));

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

var_dump($data, curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT));
exit;

Answer 2

Sounds like your arg_separator.output is set to "&" in your php.ini. Either comment that line out or change to just "&"