How to use CURL via a proxy?

Question

I am looking to set curl to use a proxy server. The url is provided by an html form, which has not been a problem. Without the proxy it works fine. I have found code on this and other sites, but they do not work. Any help in finding the correct solution would be much appreciated. I feel that the bellow are close, but that I am missing something. Thank You.

The bellow code I adapted from here http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/10572.htm but it returns an error message about a missing T_VARIABLE on line 12.

<?

$url = '$_POST[1]';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPPROXYTUNNEL, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, '66.96.200.39:80');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST,'GET');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1)
curl_exec ($ch); 
$curl_info = curl_getinfo($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo '<br />';
print_r($curl_info);
?>

The bellow is from curl through proxy returns no content

<?

$proxy = "66.96.200.39:80";
$proxy = explode(':', $proxy);
$url = "$_POST[1]";

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy[0]);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYPORT, $proxy[1]);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);

$exec = curl_exec($ch);

echo curl_error($ch);
print_r(curl_getinfo($ch));
echo $exec;
?>

is currently live on pelican-cement.com but also does not work.

UPDATE: Thank you for all your help, I made the above changes. Now it only returns a blank screen.

<?

$url = $_POST['1'];
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPPROXYTUNNEL, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, '66.96.200.39:80');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST,'GET');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
curl_exec ($ch); 
$curl_scraped_page = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo $curl_scraped_page;
?> 

Cribriform

You are missing a semicolon on line 12 – Toastmaster

also, you need to change $url = '$_POST[1]' to $url = $_POST[1] - otherwise, $url will be a string instead of the URL you want – Sinotibetan

Also, the key in the $_POST array is a string not an integer so you'd want it to say $_POST['1'] – Exclaim

'<? $url = $_POST['1']; $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPPROXYTUNNEL, 0); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, '66.96.200.39:80'); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 0); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST,'GET'); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1); curl_exec ($ch); $curl_scraped_page = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); echo $curl_scraped_page; ?>' @Toastmaster @Sinotibetan @MT – Cribriform

The form on pelican-cement.com has inputs named "firstname" and "lastname", but none named "1". – Gaylenegayler

@user586011: Please add your solution as an answer below and accept it. Don't put the solution into the question, that does not work well. – Kutchins

Answer 1

Here is a working version with your bugs removed.

$url = 'http://dynupdate.no-ip.com/ip.php';
$proxy = '127.0.0.1:8888';
//$proxyauth = 'user:password';

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD, $proxyauth);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
$curl_scraped_page = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo $curl_scraped_page;

I have added CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD in case any of your proxies require a user name and password. I set CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER to 1, so that the data will be returned to $curl_scraped_page variable.

I removed a second extra curl_exec($ch); which would stop the variable being returned. I consolidated your proxy IP and port into one setting.

I also removed CURLOPT_HTTPPROXYTUNNEL and CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST as it was the default.

If you don't want the headers returned, comment out CURLOPT_HEADER.

To disable the proxy simply set it to null.

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, null);

Any questions feel free to ask, I work with cURL every day.

Bakunin

nice to know that you work with CURL everyday. I tried setting a socks proxy and it works on my local machine but doesn't work on my linux dedicated server. Any idea ? – Cattish

@Cattish Most web hosts block ports that aren't 80 or 443 for security reasons. – Darnel

I already solved it though. I'm sure others will benefit from this. – Cattish

@GravyCode: if we get proxy from some services in that case do i required to pass username/password? – Thenceforth

How i should know if proxy port is blocked by the webhost ? – Unwise

What about CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE ? a socks proxy is very different from https proxy and will cause the function to communicate with different protocol and fail if the request is not expected by the proxy server. – Fistulous

I am getting white screen when i am executing your code.. is this suppose to happen ? If i remove the $proxy to null i am getting http 200 and my ip address etc.. – Similitude

can this be used to say scrape emails from fb pages? – Circulate

Thank you! I was stuck on this issue for a week. I was missing the proxy. – Bakerman

Answer 2

I have explained use of various CURL options required for CURL PROXY.

$url = 'http://dynupdate.no-ip.com/ip.php';
$proxy = '127.0.0.1:8888';
$proxyauth = 'user:password';

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);         // URL for CURL call
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy);     // PROXY details with port
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD, $proxyauth);   // Use if proxy have username and password
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE, CURLPROXY_SOCKS5); // If expected to call with specific PROXY type
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);  // If url has redirects then go to the final redirected URL.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 0);  // Do not outputting it out directly on screen.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);   // If you want Header information of response else make 0
$curl_scraped_page = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo $curl_scraped_page;

Apostil

These comments are helpful, but others should note that the additional options are not actually required. – Triplett

Answer 3

root@APPLICATIOSERVER:/var/www/html# php connectiontest.php
61e23468-949e-4103-8e08-9db09249e8s1 OpenSSL SSL_connect: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL in connection to 10.172.123.1:80 root@APPLICATIOSERVER:/var/www/html#

Post declaring the proxy settings in the php script file issue has been fixed.

$proxy = '10.172.123.1:80';
curl_setopt($cSession, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy); // PROXY details with port

Keelia

Answer 4

Here is a well tested function which i used for my projects with detailed self explanatory comments

---

There are many times when the ports other than 80 are blocked by server firewall so the code appears to be working fine on localhost but not on the server

function get_page($url){

global $proxy;
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); // return headers 0 no 1 yes
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // return page 1:yes
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 200); // http request timeout 20 seconds
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true); // Follow redirects, need this if the url changes
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, 2); //if http server gives redirection responce
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT,
    "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, "cookies.txt"); // cookies storage / here the changes have been made
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, "cookies.txt");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); // false for https
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, "gzip"); // the page encoding

$data = curl_exec($ch); // execute the http request
curl_close($ch); // close the connection
return $data;
}

Sackbut

This helped me: curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); // false for https – Stoma

@Stoma Beware, though, in using CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER = false. This means that cURL wont do any certificate check when connecting to the https server, thus rendering the connection vulnerable to a possible man-in-the-middle attack – therefore data security is not guaranteed anymore. Better use CURLOPT_CAPATH to give a directory containing a set of valid root certification authorities (/etc/ssl/certs on Debian/Ubuntu, for example) – Kazimir