Accessing Actiontec modem screens via PHP - php

Question

I have an Actiontec V1000H router. I want to access its "WAN Ethernet Status" page using a script (which will extract the sent and received packet counts for plotting). From a browser, this URL works fine:
http://192.168.1.1/modemstatus_wanethstatus.html
But, when I use that URL in my script, I nearly always get the main screen. (It works on rare occasions.) Here's my script:
$wanStatusUrl = "http://192.168.1.1/modemstatus_wanethstatus.html";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $wanStatusUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, 'admin:myPassword');
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
I need help accessing the modemstatus_wanethstatus.html page. I believe the issue is due to some idiocycracy of the modem.

Answer 1

Use this so that curl return you the html source as response into your $output:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

Answer 2

The main screen has a "login" button, and adding the equivalent of that prior to accessing the WAN Status screen made it work. So, for the record:
// login
$loginUrl = 'http://192.168.1.1/login.cgi?inputUserName=admin&inputPassword=myPassword&nothankyou=1';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $loginUrl);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
// get status page
$wanStatusUrl = "http://192.168.1.1/modemstatus_wanethstatus.html";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $wanStatusUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // so curl_exec returns the response
$responseText = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
// print $responseText; // contains wanEthStatus_ReceivedPackets and wanEthStatus_SendPackets
// get the two packet counts ... wanEthStatus_ReceivedPackets and wanEthStatus_SendPackets
preg_match( "/wanEthStatus_ReceivedPackets.*?\'(\d+)\';.*?\'(\d+)\';.*?wanEthStatus_TimeSpan/s", $responseText, $matches );
print_r( $matches );
"Man Always Wins in the End."