Use cookie with cURL PHP - php

Question

I need to get the source code of a page that is only accessible when I am logged in. However, when I use the following code, it doesn't recognize that I'm logged in, and asks me to re-login.
$opts = array('http' => array('header'=> 'Cookie: ' . $COOKIEFILE."\r\n"));
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$file = file_get_contents('http://www.example.com/', false, $context);
echo $file;
I have researched and found examples similar to mine, but they don't help me. When I use the above code it doesn't recognize my cookies.
Full code:
$USERNAME = 'myEmail';
$PASSWORD = 'myPassword';
$COOKIEFILE = tempnam ("/tmp", "CURLCOOKIE");
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 30);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $COOKIEFILE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $COOKIEFILE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 120);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 120);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,
'https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?hl=en&service=alerts&continue=http://www.google.com/alerts/manage');
$data = curl_exec($ch);
$formFields = getFormFields($data);
$formFields['Email'] = $USERNAME;
$formFields['Passwd'] = $PASSWORD;
unset($formFields['PersistentCookie']);
$post_string = '';
foreach($formFields as $key => $value) {
$post_string .= $key . '=' . urlencode($value) . '&';
}
$post_string = substr($post_string, 0, -1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLoginAuth');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_string);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
$ch = curl_init ("http:/example.com");
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $COOKIEFILE);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$output = curl_exec ($ch);
var_dump($output);

Answer 1

Allen, in situations like yours, when I'm having trouble login with curl, what I normally do is use Live Http Headers for firefox to log my requests and then use the request headers with curl CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, the cookies will be included in the headers.
Flow:
Log in to the website using your browser, once logged, log any request with Live Http Headers for firefox, copy and paste the request to an array, something like :
$myHeaders = array(
"Host: stackoverflow.com",
"User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0",
"Accept: application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01",
"Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5",
"Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate",
"DNT: 1",
"Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8",
"X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest",
"Referer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32933636/use-cookie-with-curl-php",
"Content-Length: 482",
"Cookie: mycookie :)",
"Connection: keep-alive",
"Pragma: no-cache"
);
Then, use the headers with curl:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $myHeaders );
Notes:
1- No need for CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR or CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE
2- This works with almost every site I've tried.
3- Some cookies may expire after a while, others, like google, never expire.