PHP CURL & HTTPS

Question

I found this function that does an AWESOME job (IMHO): http://nadeausoftware.com/articles/2007/06/php_tip_how_get_web_page_using_curl

/**  * Get a web file (HTML, XHTML, XML, image, etc.) from a URL.  Return an  * array containing the HTTP server response header fields and content.  */ function get_web_page( $url ) {     $options = array(         CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,     // return web page         CURLOPT_HEADER         => false,    // don't return headers         CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,     // follow redirects         CURLOPT_ENCODING       => "",       // handle all encodings         CURLOPT_USERAGENT      => "spider", // who am i         CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER    => true,     // set referer on redirect         CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120,      // timeout on connect         CURLOPT_TIMEOUT        => 120,      // timeout on response         CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS      => 10,       // stop after 10 redirects     );      $ch      = curl_init( $url );     curl_setopt_array( $ch, $options );     $content = curl_exec( $ch );     $err     = curl_errno( $ch );     $errmsg  = curl_error( $ch );     $header  = curl_getinfo( $ch );     curl_close( $ch );      $header['errno']   = $err;     $header['errmsg']  = $errmsg;     $header['content'] = $content;     return $header; } 

The only problem I have is that it doesn't work for https://. Anny ideas what I need to do to make this work for https? Thanks!

Answer 1

Quick fix, add this in your options:

curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false) 

Now you have no idea what host you're actually connecting to, because cURL will not verify the certificate in any way. Hope you enjoy man-in-the-middle attacks!

Or just add it to your current function:

/**  * Get a web file (HTML, XHTML, XML, image, etc.) from a URL.  Return an  * array containing the HTTP server response header fields and content.  */ function get_web_page( $url ) {     $options = array(         CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,     // return web page         CURLOPT_HEADER         => false,    // don't return headers         CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,     // follow redirects         CURLOPT_ENCODING       => "",       // handle all encodings         CURLOPT_USERAGENT      => "spider", // who am i         CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER    => true,     // set referer on redirect         CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120,      // timeout on connect         CURLOPT_TIMEOUT        => 120,      // timeout on response         CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS      => 10,       // stop after 10 redirects         CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false     // Disabled SSL Cert checks     );      $ch      = curl_init( $url );     curl_setopt_array( $ch, $options );     $content = curl_exec( $ch );     $err     = curl_errno( $ch );     $errmsg  = curl_error( $ch );     $header  = curl_getinfo( $ch );     curl_close( $ch );      $header['errno']   = $err;     $header['errmsg']  = $errmsg;     $header['content'] = $content;     return $header; } 

Answer 2

I was trying to use CURL to do some https API calls with php and ran into this problem. I noticed a recommendation on the php site which got me up and running: http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt.php#110457

Please everyone, stop setting CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER to false or 0. If your PHP installation doesn't have an up-to-date CA root certificate bundle, download the one at the curl website and save it on your server:

http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html

Then set a path to it in your php.ini file, e.g. on Windows:

curl.cainfo=c:\php\cacert.pem

Turning off CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER allows man in the middle (MITM) attacks, which you don't want!