Get jsonRPC data with PHP curl, - php

Question

Setting up a JSON-RPC on my vps which I want to connect via PHP CURL on my website doing a basic request and looking for getmasternodecount.
Tried many scripts and libraries before however none seems to work in my case. Now I try to write some basic php code, but this skill isnt my best.
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', '1');
function coinFunction () {
$feed = 'http://user:pass#ip/';
$post_string = '{"method": "getmasternodecount", "params": []}';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $feed);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PORT, port);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "user:pass");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_string);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-type: application/stratum', 'Content-length: '.strlen($post_string)));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-type: application/json', 'Content-length: '.strlen($post_string)));
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $output;
}
$data = coinFunction();
var_dump($data);
echo $data;
?>
And gives me this data dump:
string(127) "HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden Date: Sun, 24 May 2020 00:06:21 GMT Content-Length: 0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 " HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden Date: Sun, 24 May 2020 00:06:21 GMT Content-Length: 0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
When i delete all the var dump information etc, it send me a whitepage and sometimes NULL.
Kindly Regards,

Answer 1

Let's work with the first snippet. Since it's a POST request, file_get_contents is rather out of place here. Add the following setopt lines:
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
Without those, the result of curl_exec won't contain the returned content.
It would also be advisable to specify the Content-Type of the request (which is application/json). The server might handle it even without, but just in case:
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
'Content-Type:application/json'));
Authentication is another thing. Credentials in the URL suggest Basic, but the server might expect otherwise... See CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH.