cURL connection refused - php

Question

I'm trying to simply read the Philips Hue lights information from my home with the following code:
$fp = fopen(dirname(__FILE__).'/errorlog.txt', 'a');
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
CURLOPT_URL => 'http://119.119.20.20:2827/api/Js82jH2lao-pAiws89S9A-k9hHsukw72/lights',
CURLOPT_VERBOSE => true,
CURLOPT_STDERR => $fp
));
$resp = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
print_r($resp);
It returns nothing. Looking at errorlog.txt it says:
* About to connect() to 119.119.20.20 port 2827 (#0)
* Trying 119.119.20.20... * Connection refused
* couldn't connect to host
* Closing connection #0
I'm able to read the data and change light settings through a site like hurl.it which tells me I've setup my router correctly. allow_url_fopen on my server is on. I'm using curl because I want to do a PUT request as well. I don't want to use a library for simply turning on and off an light.
How can I make this work?
Edit to clarify: I'm using an external server to host the php, which communicates to my Philips Hue bridge at home. You can assume I forwarded my port correctly. No VPN.

Answer 1

My guess is it's a users/permissions issue.
Does www-data/http user have permission to use curl on your server? All php scripts will be executed as that user so without correct permissions curl will fail giving this error.
Which user created the php script? Have you changed file permissions to allow other users correct privileges?
Having said all that, you stated that you don't want to use a library for something so simple, why even bother with curl? file_get_contents can PUT, POST etc out of the box.
Get status from bridge as associative array:
$result = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://119.119.20.20:2827/api/Js82jH2lao-pAiws89S9A-k9hHsukw72/lights'), true);
Turn off all lights with a PUT request:
$data = '{"on":false}';
$result = file_get_contents('http://119.119.20.20:2827/api/Js82jH2lao-pAiws89S9A-k9hHsukw72/groups/0/action', null, stream_context_create(array(
'http' => array(
'method' => 'PUT',
'header' => 'Content-Type: application/json' . "\r\n"
. 'Content-Length: ' . strlen($data) . "\r\n",
'content' => $data
),
)));
Just tried it on my Hue setup. Works for me.