How Can I Use PHP cURL to Securely Retrieve Data from HTTPS URLs?

PHP CURL & HTTPS

This article addresses the issue of using PHP CURL to retrieve web files from HTTPS URLs.

The Dilemma

The provided function, get_web_page, encounters a snag when attempting to fetch content from HTTPS URLs.

The Fix

To enable HTTPS support, we can implement one of two solutions:

Solution 1: Manual Option

Add this line to your options array:

curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false)

Caution: This quick fix disables certificate verification, making your system vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

Solution 2: Function Update

Incorporate the same code snippet into the updated get_web_page 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;
}

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