PHP Curl File Upload sends Empty Upload - php

Question

I'm trying to convert the following CURL:
curl -X POST \
-H "Content-Type: image/jpeg" \
--data-binary '#myPicture.jpg' \
https://api.parse.com/1/files/pic.jpg
To PHP:
$ch = curl_init();
$data = array('myPicture.jpg' => "#myPicture.jpg");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
$headers = array();
$headers[] = "Content-Type: image/jpeg";
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://api.parse.com/1/files/myPicture.jpg');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, true);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
But my response is false. Here is what I get from print_r(curl_getinfo($ch), true):
Array
(
[url] => https://api.parse.com/1/files/myPicture.jpg
[content_type] =>
[http_code] => 0
[header_size] => 0
[request_size] => 0
[filetime] => -1
[ssl_verify_result] => 20
[redirect_count] => 0
[total_time] => 0.28
[namelookup_time] => 0.187
[connect_time] => 0.218
[pretransfer_time] => 0.28
[size_upload] => 0
[size_download] => 0
[speed_download] => 0
[speed_upload] => 0
[download_content_length] => -1
[upload_content_length] => -1
[starttransfer_time] => 0
[redirect_time] => 0
)
Any ideas as to why this isnt working? Thanks!

Answer 1

The ssl_verify_result has the value of 20, which means, according to the documentation:
unable to get local issuer certificate
the issuer certificate of a locally looked up certificate could not be found. This normally means the list of trusted certificates is not complete.
You can try without verifying the peer first:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
If that works, you will have to specify the path of a recent CA bundle. See also: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html
You should also check whether the file you're trying to upload is in the expected folder. If you specify CURLOPT_VERBOSE = 1 it should warn you about this as well.
Update
After checking the API documentation, the service doesn't expect a regular file upload (i.e. "multipart/form-data"); rather, a raw upload is required.
This can be accomplished by:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, file_get_contents('myPicture.jpg'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Content-Type: image/jpeg"));
Update 2
Passing anything using CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS will implicitly set the request method to POST and Content-Type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded. When you pass an array, the values may start with # to indicate a file upload (doing so should also implicitly change the Content-Type to multipart/form-data).
The command line curl allows the # in a few places:
using --data-binary to specify a file containing raw binary data
using --data or --data-ascii to specify a file containing url-encoded data
using --F or --form
The latter behaves the same as passing an array to CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS and using the # prefix. The other two behave the same as passing a string.