logging into website using php - php

Question

Im trying to auto login into a website using php, i dont get any error with this code neither it gives any result to me. here is the code i tried, i get only a blank page, im expecting the sourcecode of the page after login.
<?php
$fields_string=array();
$url = 'https://subscriber.hoovers.com/H/login/login.html';
$fields = array(
"j_username"=>"XXXXXX",
"j_password"=>"XXXX"
);
//url-ify the data for the POST
foreach($fields as $key=>$value)
{
$fields_string .= $key.'='.$value.'&';
}
rtrim($fields_string,'&');
//open connection
$ch = curl_init();
//set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,count($fields));
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$fields);
//execute post
$result = curl_exec($ch);
echo $result;
//close connection
curl_close($ch);
?>

Answer 1

I was able to get your script to return the sourcecode of the page by adding these curl options:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
By default curl doesn't trust the web server’s certificate, the last option above tells curl not to verify the web server. You might want to switch that last option to this:
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, true);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CAINFO, "path/to/your/cacert.pem");
If you are going to go this route, I would check out Using cURL in PHP to access HTTPS (SSL/TLS) protected sites its a great tutorial and will go over everything you need to know about it.