Retrieve content of another website - php

Question

I want to get the content of another page. The background is that I wanted to make an AJAX request but due to the Same Origin Policy I cannot do this. Now I wanted to write an own PHP script on which I make the AJAX request. The URL looks like the following:
http://domain.com/subfolder/another_subfolder/index.php?id=1234&tx_manager_pi9[parameter]=1&tx_manager_pi9[category]=test&tx_manager_pi9[action]=getInfos&tx_manager_pi9[controller]=Finder&cHash=123456789001233455332
I tried it with fopen, curl and file_get_contents. Nothing from the works. The problem is if I put in the URL as string like
$results = file_get_contents('http://domain.com/subfolder/another_subfolder/index.php?id=1234&tx_manager_pi9[parameter]=1&tx_manager_pi9[category]=test&tx_manager_pi9[action]=getInfos&tx_manager_pi9[controller]=Finder&cHash=123456789001233455332');
it does work. If I put in a variable
$url = 'http://domain.com/subfolder/another_subfolder/index.php?id=1234&tx_manager_pi9[parameter]=1&tx_manager_pi9[category]=test&tx_manager_pi9[action]=getInfos&tx_manager_pi9[controller]=Finder&cHash=123456789001233455332';
$results = file_get_contents($url);
I come to a wrong page. With the specific parameter I get a result. If the parameter are not given correctly it seems that I come to a default page. I can't make a sense out of it.
The same for curl:
$curlSession = curl_init();
$options = array
(
CURLOPT_URL=>$url,
CURLOPT_HEADER=>false,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER=>true,
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION=>true
);
curl_setopt_array($curlSession,$options);
$results = curl_exec($curlSession);
This doesn't work. If I put in the URL as string and not as variable I get some results! I thought that the ampersand & or the square brackets [] are the problem but I cannot say this. & should be reserved and [] are no correct URL parameters. But why does the direct input work and not the variable?
I used the variable because I make some replacements with str_replace where I make the query more flexible.
I saw similar questions here (cURL function not working, curl_setopt doesnt work with url as a variable) but there was never posted a real solution.

Answer 1

You have a , instead of a ; in your second code block.

Answer 2

Are you required to be "logged in" to the site that you're visiting? That would explain why it's working in your browser and not through your server script.
If all else is the same, your browser and the PHP functions you listed should return the same results.
Could you provide the actual URL for us to test?
EDIT: Based on the URL you provided, it's working fine for me:
php > $test = file_get_contents("http://www.domain.com/user/user_neu/index.php?id=16518&tx_stusermanager_pi9%5Bindications%5D=1&tx_stusermanager_pi9%5Bcategory%5D=cure&tx_stusermanager_pi9%5Baction%5D=getHousesByIndications&tx_stusermanager_pi9%5Bcontroller%5D=HouseFinder&cHash=88230660f01ads34d73a199b82e976");
php > var_dump($test);
string(29) "16,15,14,13,12,11,17,19,22"

Answer 3

My problem was that I used an encoded URL as starting point. E.g.
http://domain.com/subfolder/another_subfolder/index.php?id=1234&tx_manager_pi9%5Bparameter%5D=%23%23%23param1%23%23%23&tx_manager_pi9%5Bcategory%5D=%23%23%23param2%23%23%23&tx_manager_pi9%5Baction%5D=getInfos&tx_manager_pi9%5Bcontroller%5D=Finder&cHash=123456789001233455332
I made a str_replace on a URL encoded string. Even using urldecode afterwards the URL was not correctly generated for curl, file_get_contents, ...
The correct URL should be something like this
http://domain.com/subfolder/another_subfolder/index.php?id=1234&tx_manager_pi9[parameter]=###param1###&tx_manager_pi9[category]=###param2###&&tx_manager_pi9[action]=getInfos&tx_manager_pi9[controller]=Finder&&cHash=123456789001233455332
i.e. without &, %23, %5B, %5D