Connecting to VCenter with PHP using REST API authentication error - php

Question

I followed the instructions in the official vsphere site to get info from the server and from the answer of another user here .
From what I have understood, firstly I have to get the session id (cis id), but I got "null" as a result.
I tried multiple codes but the result is the same:
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$headers = array(
'Content-Type: application/json',
'Accept: application/json',
'vmware-use-header-authn: test'
);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://vcsa/rest/com/vmware/cis/session");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, 'administrator#vs.dom:userpassword');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC );
$out = json_decode(curl_exec($ch));
// var_dump($out);
if ($out === false) {
echo 'Curl Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
exit;
}
$sid = $out;
dd($out);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("vmware-api-session-id:$sid"));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://vcsa/rest/vcenter/vm");
$output = curl_exec($ch);
$vms = json_decode($output);
var_dump($vms);
curl_close($ch);
The result is null.

Answer 1

this is a script word 100% using PHP
<?php
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://{ip}/rest/com/vmware/cis/session");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, 'username' . ":" . 'password');
$out = json_decode(curl_exec($ch));
// var_dump($out);
if ($out === false) {
echo 'Curl Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
exit;
}
$sid = $out->value;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("vmware-api-session-id:$sid"));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://{ip}/rest/vcenter/vm");
$output = curl_exec($ch);
$vms = json_decode($output);
var_dump($vms);
curl_close($ch);
?>

Answer 2

when you debug your code, the $out variable return null?
If yes, can you check if your curl returns 56 - OpenSSL SSL_read: Success error in $out = json_decode(curl_exec($ch));?
This error occoured with my code, and I see wich cURL in 7.67 version cause this trouble.
My solution was to downgrade cURL version to 7.65.
It works for me!

Answer 3

I had the same problem, and eventually understood that it is caused by this header:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
And replacing it with this one solves the issue:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');