Using curl in PHP doesn't work

Question

I'm trying to get a HTML page using curl in PHP on Ubuntu 15.10.

My code is the follow ..

<?php
    ini_set('display_errors', 1);

    $url = 'http://www.galliera.it/118';

    print "The url ... ".$url;
    echo '<br>';
    echo '<br>';

    //#Set CURL parameters ...
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, '');
    $data = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    print "Data ... ".$data;
    echo '<br>';
    echo '<br>';

?>

I can't show the $data value when I execute my code and in my console there is 200 as execution code returned.

Any help / suggestion / example?

Can't parse I can't show the $data value when I execute my code and in my console there is 200 ad execution code returned. but ran your code and it works fine. — Jonnix
– Jonnix, Commented Aug 10, 2017 at 21:31
its possible your IP could be blocked for any number of reasons. — user8011997
– user8011997, Commented Aug 10, 2017 at 21:41
I managed to reproduce the error when I didn't specify CURLOPT_CAINFO. The url is redirected to https, so you need to use ssl. — Peter Rakmanyi
– Peter Rakmanyi, Commented Aug 10, 2017 at 21:58
Instead of print(), use print_r($data) as it tells you, that $data = false; Meaning there was a problem with curl executing your command. — Peter Rakmanyi
– Peter Rakmanyi, Commented Aug 10, 2017 at 22:32

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-17 20:24:57Z

You need to set up curl with SSL

If CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER is true (and it should be!), you need to tell curl where to look for certificates using CURLOPT_CAINFO and CURLOPT_CAPATH (documentation).

All browsers that use SSL must have a local collection of public keys of the different Certificate Authorities, so they can establish a chain of trust to the website's secure connection. This list needs to be updated regularly as certificates expire and are replaced, become compromised and cannot be trusted or new ones are added. The website https://curl.haxx.se/ has a cacert.pem file extracted from Mozilla.

The recommended way of getting an up to date copy is to periodically download it from that site, but not too often as to overwhelm their servers. Once every month should be enough.

On linux, you can use a crontab entry like this:

# update CA cert store every month
0 1 1 * * curl --remote-name --time-cond /path/to/cacert.pem https://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem

The url 302 redirects to the https version anyway, so it should be https and you saved a network roundtrip.

$url = 'https://www.galliera.it/118';

$ch = curl_init();
$opt = array(
  CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER => true,
  CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_HEADER => false,
  CURLOPT_URL => $url,
  CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST => 2, //match common name in cert
  CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => '', //enable gzip
  CURLOPT_CAINFO => '/path/to/cacert.pem', //CA cert store !!!
  // if you are using linux and have openssl installed:
  CURLOPT_CAPATH => '/etc/ssl/certs',
  // you only need this when actually using a proxy
  // curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, '');
);
curl_setopt_array($ch, $opt);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo $data;

With CURLOPT_PROXY you specify a proxy ip:port, but if you're not using one just don't have it in there.

I've tried to use your suggestions but something goes wrong ... so I've tried to restart my Ubuntu virtual machine and now my original code works fine ... :-(. Your suggestions are useful anyway!

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