PHP CURL - Apple push notification servers - php

Question

I am writing code to send notifications to the Apple push notification servers (APNs) using PHP Laravel. It says in the documents that it requires HTTP/ HPACK header compression.
I've tried using cURL
$cURLConnection = curl_init();
if(strcmp(env('APP_ENV'), 'production') == 0) {
curl_setopt($cURLConnection, CURLOPT_URL, 'api.push.apple.com:443');
} else {
curl_setopt($cURLConnection, CURLOPT_URL, 'api.development.push.apple.com:443');
}
curl_setopt_array($cURLConnection, [
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER =>true,
CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION =>CURL_HTTP_VERSION_2_0,
]);
curl_setopt($cURLConnection, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
'path: /3/device/<devicetoken>',
'authorization: bearer ' . $token,
'Content-Type: application/json'
));
curl_setopt($cURLConnection, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postRequest);
curl_setopt ($cURLConnection, CURLOPT_SSLVERSION, CURL_SSLVERSION_TLSv1_2);
$apiResponse = curl_exec($cURLConnection);
but the APNS server always returning 'Empty reply from server'

Answer 1

I see a few things that could be problematic.
Try adding the following to actually turn your request into a POST request.
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
Your 'path' should also be part of the main URL instead of being added as a header.
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.push.apple.com:443/3/device/<devicetoken>");

Answer 2

In addition to the previous suggestion, we should also be able to use certificate bases auth system.
Example snippet below:
<?php
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://path-to-auth-example.com/token');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "grant_type=client_cert");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSLCERT, "path/to/your/pem-file.pem");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSLCERTTYPE, "PEM");
$headers = [];
$headers[] = 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded';
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
if (curl_errno($ch)) {
//catch your error wisely
}
curl_close($ch);
$result = json_decode($result);
print_r($result);
?>