How to pass user input to an api endpoint using php curl? - php

Question

I am trying to POST HTML form login credentials(email & password) to an endpoint using PHP cURL and subsequently redirect to a different page(admin/index.php) after a successful login. However, I keep getting {"success":"false","message":"please provide email and password"} error from my nodejs login endpoint. I am inexperienced with cURL hence I am failing to notice where I am getting it wrong. Please help.
<?php
session_start();
// include('includes/config.php');
$error = ''; //Variable to Store error message;
if (isset($_POST['login'])) {
if (empty($_POST['email']) || empty($_POST['password'])) {
$error = "Email or Password is Invalid";
} else {
//Define $user and $pass
$email = ($_POST['email']);
$password = ($_POST['password']);
$url = 'http://localhost:5000/auth/login';
$curl = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $email.":".$password);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode(['email' => $email, 'password' =>$password]));
$result = curl_exec($curl);
echo $result;
if ($result == 200) {
$_SESSION['alogin'] = $email;
header("Location: admin/index.php"); // Redirecting to other page
} else {
$error = "Try to login.";
}
curl_close($curl);
}
}
?>
Here is the HTML form.
<div class="panel panel-info">
<div class="panel-heading">
LOGIN FORM
</div>
<div class="panel-body">
<form role="form" method="post" name="login" action="index.php" role="form">
<div class="form-group">
<label>Enter Email</label>
<input class="form-control" type="email" name="email" autocomplete="off" />
</div>
<div class="form-group">
<label>Password</label>
<input class="form-control" type="password" name="password" autocomplete="off" />
</div>
<button type="submit" name="login" class="btn btn-info">LOGIN</button>
</form>
</div>
</div>

Answer 1

curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode(['email' => $email, 'password' =>$password]));
There are two formats for CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS Neither is JSON.
$post = 'key1=value1&key2=value2&key3=value3';
$post = array('key1'=>$value1,'key2'=>$value2,'key3'=>'value3');
You may need to use urlencode() on username and password.
Were you told to use the CURLOPT_USERPWD,
That is unconventional.
And this is just wrong. It might work, but it is still wrong.
if ($result == 200) {
Use
$status = curl_getinfo($ch,CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if ($status == 200){...