Getting external JSON data. jQuery+AJAX works. PHP+cURL doesn't - php

Question

I'm stuck on this. I'm trying to pull dynamically generated JSON data from a remote server. Here is just the URL to generate the JSON:
https://www.librarything.com/api_getdata.php?userid=jtodd1973&key=1962548278&max=1&responseType=json
I am able to access the data fine using jQuery/AJAX. Here's the code I'm using on jtodd.info/librarything.php:
<div id="booklist">
<table id="tbl_books" style="width:80%; border: thin solid black;">
<tr style="border: thin solid black; background-color: #666; color: #fff;">
<th style="width:40%;">Title</th>
<th style="width:30%;">Author</th>
<th style="width:10%;">Rating</th>
<th style="width:20%;">Reading dates</th>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function () {
$.ajax({
type:'POST',
callback: 'callback',
crossDomain: true,
contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8',
dataType:'JSONP',
beforeSend: function setHeader(xhr){ xhr.setRequestHeader('accept', 'application/json'); },
url:'https://www.librarything.com/api_getdata.php?userid=jtodd1973&key=1962548278&booksort=title&showTags=1&showCollections=1&showDates=1&showRatings=1&max=1000',
success:function(data) {
x = 0;
var data1 = JSON.stringify(data);
var data2 = JSON.parse(data1);
$.each(data2.books, function(i,book){
var date1 = Number(1420027199);
var date2 = Number(book.entry_stamp);
if (date2 > date1) {
x = x + 1;
var testTitle = book.title;
var n = testTitle.indexOf(" (");
if(n > -1) {
var bookTitle = testTitle.substr(0, n);
} else {
var bookTitle = testTitle;
}
var bookAuthor = book.author_lf;
var bookRating = book.rating;
if(x % 2 == 0){
var rowColor = "#fff";
} else {
var rowColor = "#ccc";
}
$('#booklist table').append('<tr style="background-color:' + rowColor + ';">' +
'<td style="font-style: italic;">' + bookTitle +
'</td><td>' + bookAuthor +
'</td><td style="text-align: center;">' + bookRating +
'</td><td> ' +
'</td></tr>');
}
});
},
error:function() {
alert("Sorry, I can't get the feed");
}
});
});
</script>
However, I am not able to access the data using PHP & cURL. I'm getting no response from the server. More specifically, I get Error number 7 / HTTP code 0. Here's the code I am using on jtodd.info/librarything2.php:
<?php
$url = 'https://www.librarything.com/api_getdata.php?userid=jtodd1973&key=1962548278&max=1&responseType=json';
$result = get_web_page( $url );
if ( $result['errno'] != 0 )
echo "<p>Error number = " . $result['errno'] . "</p>";
if ( $result['http_code'] != 200 )
echo "<p>HTTP code = " . $result['http_code'] . "</p>";
$page = $result['content'];
echo "<pre>" . $page . "</pre>";
function get_web_page( $url ) {
if(!function_exists("curl_init")) die("cURL extension is not installed");
$ch = curl_init();
$options = array(
CURLOPT_URL => $url,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true, // return web page
CURLOPT_HEADER => true, // don't return headers
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true, // follow redirects
CURLOPT_ENCODING => "", // handle all encodings
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1216.0 Safari/537.2", // who am i
CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER => true, // set referer on redirect
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120, // timeout on connect
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 120, // timeout on response
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10, // stop after 10 redirects
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false // Disabled SSL Cert checks
);
curl_setopt_array( $ch, $options );
$content = curl_exec( $ch );
$err = curl_errno( $ch );
$errmsg = curl_error( $ch );
$header = curl_getinfo( $ch );
curl_close( $ch );
$header['errno'] = $err;
$header['errmsg'] = $errmsg;
$header['content'] = $content;
return $header;
}
?>
Thanks for any advice.

Answer 1

I've just tried your code - and this is the response I get:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 20:53:34 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 1102
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: cookie_from=deleted; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: LTAnonSessionID=572521187; expires=Wed, 10-Feb-2016 20:53:34 GMT; path=/
lt-backend: 192.168.0.101:80
{"settings":{"amazonchoice":null,"show":{"showCovers":null,"showAuthors":null,"showTitles":null,"showRatings":null,"showDates":null,"showReviews":null,"showTags":null,"showCollections":null},"style":null,"title":null,"titleLink":null,"theuser":"jtodd1973","powered":"Powered by ","uniqueKey":null,"bookcount":1,"showWhat":null,"nullSetMsg":"No books found.","notEnoughImagesMsg":"Not enough books found.","domain":"www.librarything.com","textsnippets":{"by":"by","Tagged":"Tagged","readreview":"read review","stars":"stars"}},"books":{"112016118":{"book_id":"112016118","title":"As I lay dying : the corrected text","author_lf":"Faulkner, William","author_fl":"William Faulkner","author_code":"faulknerwilliam","ISBN":"067973225X","ISBN_cleaned":"067973225X","publicationdate":"1990","entry_stamp":"1409083726","entry_date":"Aug 26, 2014","copies":"1","rating":5,"language_main":"","language_secondary":"","language_original":"","hasreview":"0","dateacquired_stamp":"0","dateacquired_date":"Dec 31, 1969","cover":"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/P\/067973225X.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg"}}}
i.o.w. the problem is not in your PHP code - you need to look further (like: find out if your IP is blocked for some reason)