Trouble shooting PHP cURL - php

Question

This is an old script that is no longer working that logins to Paypal, I had a working version but deleted it by accident now I'm trying to get an old back up working.
Initialize curl:
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, '');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042523 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.10');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, PAYPAL_COOKIE_FILE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, PAYPAL_COOKIE_FILE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT, true);
cp_post_page function
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $query_string);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
ob_start();
curl_exec($ch);
$response = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $response;
Rest of the script:
$response = cp_get_page($ch, 'https://www.paypal.com/ca/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_ship-now');
$query_string = "CONTEXT=" . $form_context. "&login_cmd=&login_params=&login_email=" . PAYPAL_EMAIL . "&login_password=" . PAYPAL_PASSWORD
. "&submit.x=Log%20In&form_charset=UTF-8&auth=$form_auth"
. "&browser_name=Firefox&browser_version=3&browser_version_full=3&operating_system=Linux";
$response = cp_post_page($ch, $form_action, $query_string); <--- Fails here
Response from the curl:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Apache Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=14400 Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=14400 Content-Type: text/html DC: slc-a-origin-www-1.paypal.com Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 23:45:19 GMT Content-Length: 54 Connection: keep-alive Set-Cookie: X-PP-SILOVER=name%3DLIVE5.WEB.1%26silo_version%3D880%26app%3Dslingshot%26TIME%3D2402383954; domain=.paypal.com; path=/; Secure; HttpOnly Set-Cookie: X-PP-SILOVER=; Expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT
Fatal Failure
Headers being sent:
POST /ca/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=[removed]&dispatch=[removed] HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042523 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.10
Host: www.paypal.com
Accept: */*
Referer: https://www.paypal.com/ca/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_ship-now
Cookie: aksession=1383609018~id=cookieHTdyV99GKjx4ataOFl8HX+fgn4AgJSYxaLCcm+N/2KWZPsBAQbqDZ0ek9tQy9J9/gwTMcvHTSYGX65BNgg10oVSLJurTnMsIlySSW7uFaZjrVKxpCVApCbxyp5lfygq/QA1GvRvOk0k=; DC=slc-a-origin-www-1.paypal.com; X-PP-SILOVER=name%3DLIVE5.WEB.1%26silo_version%3D880%26app%3Dslingshot%26TIME%3D2385606738; Apache=10.73.8.47.1383608717943546; navlns=0.0; pNTcMTtQfrJuaJiwEnWXQ6yNxfq=cRcI945EJH9tChcYgpHw1EwU36Z-qza0kxriR6IYWTNRRqPyItIzb1qCgt5K-W3DjQPwjI8yCfYaNInqtDcheZgtxQX9L7xLZM8pY7bKHS_XWsWt759waXfATBCGKYeusuJuPFdeRH2_qHRlS6s31k4inXdD-TZnRI8OEdaArFLEBx3t4-5d4NV5aeqdVSL8TuDf-kqWJFvs4Xzs2wdBEmpoocMLXGm_igzYEYHmP9KqDIUaXAMPiZUeMmPfAJiBxC8-EN5zJqI7dqs3-BgIPpCi5Is5IQe_84xDMHVBIAAgDgSUByR3-FkmBtPlfDB6rLoItmY0kT9L7yUZFW48kP3yNWHhWQ1o-InAmm; navcmd=_ship-now; cookie_check=yes; KHcl0EuY7AKSMgfvHl7J5E7hPtK=kCH9bvOH2hK9miohP-LJoRVMGNwgry4awBca8g8fKl4vOhFrS5fM82dAIUPhBGuKkYwgeLhgsPV2tVS-; cwrClyrK4LoCV1fydGbAxiNL6iG=yGLUV2f-3wPoFZV-vMEGW6jlZr7im-N5EYbO1KWk2loskGrFWziDsIkn0xLI8kQo5MScMg9TWryYuevj3SLa07p2m_IyjtTAa2W_iF4rbbPYPPsEdbypbjQjxWgd3RZw9IzCAaPJ3ZLS1R1-kJWYRevJBbZaqTApiIlRA8ALAZlOJ1g9ft_FL2GsOERgVaKpjz_aZcVeaKInfcPRHoGc9EMQTz9bFsIardyUhnQxw4Zu19vefkGYYk-1NCtLctqJ1jQ5HVn-3d7clgyddNul7JockOlurWRgPjbfkDjQ7-eXuleFhb9LkfUgpnQXPyvYTUmWh5QYnOEr9q_cRNFCRHs4vIvmhvaziv8Eyg7gFmg8v6--xOQy-a-gBqj7JEgd0kOKOWIRbneb1mm1Icd_o3lkuISss1xKvcIzXrx2scz3fq6Ys8z1VNWDNBK
Content-Length: 376
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
I verified that that the query string contains the right data, it is not urlencoded because curl will encode it from my understanding. I compared the POST data to a form submit using Chrome and the same number of fields are being sent to Paypal.
From what I am seeing the correct post data is being sent, the cookie exists but the login fails because it is missing something (I think it is a cookie issue, it is not a javascript issue as I login with javascript disabled). I'm not sure what other trouble shooting steps I can do to help pin point the issue.

Answer 1

I've solved the issue, given that one input is shown below:
<input type="hidden" id="CONTEXT_CGI_VAR" name="CONTEXT" value="REMOVED">
Even after analyzing a sample response, the reference to CONTEXT should be changed to CONTEXT_CGI_VAR in order for the curl to work correctly. Why? No idea.