cURL returning empty string - php

Question

Hey am I missing a curl_opt or something? This code was working yesterday and now it doesnt work. It is suppose to return a json string but instead returns empty string.
<?php
session_start();
$UCID=$_POST['UCID'];
$Pass=$_POST['Pass'];
$credentials=array("Username"=>$UCID, "Password"=>$Pass);
$post_field_string = http_build_query($credentials, '', '&');
$url1="https://web.njit.edu/~vm276/connect.php";
//$url1="https://www.njit.edu/cp/login.php";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 60);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROTOCOLS, CURLPROTO_HTTPS);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, $url1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_field_string);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$json=json_decode($result);
echo $json->result;
?>

Answer 1

You can get information about errors by adding to your code:
$result= curl_exec($ch);
$error = curl_error($ch);
$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($ch);
if(200 == $httpCode) {
//...
}
else {
echo "httpCode: ".$httpCode."\n";
var_dump($error);
exit();
}
http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-error.php
http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-getinfo.php