CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE doesnt append Cookie header - php

Question

Im using MAMP on a Mac running OS X Lion.
I need to connect to a remote site sending the cookie.
All goes well except for the cookie part.
For the cookie part I'm using this code:
$cookieFile = dirname(__FILE__).'/cookie.txt';
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookieFile);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $cookieFile);
The CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR part does create a cookie, but on a subsequent request CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE doesn't add a cookie header. I've checked this using HTTPScoop (a Fiddler like tool).
Any idea what might be the problem?
EDIT:
Im connecting to a ASP.Net site. Problem seems to be the im not getting a ASP.NET_SessionId cookie. The cookie i do get has a key without a value, thats probably the reason why it isn't posted.
Any idea how to force the server to send a session cookie?

Answer 1

We'd really need to see more code, but here is a sample bit I have which collects a session cookie from an initial request then uses it in a subsequent POST. It uses an anonymous proxy to run a GET request on an arbitrary URL, hopefully it helps you (to be clear though it doesn't use the COOKIEJAR, but I feel it may still be helpful).
<?php
define('TARGET_URL', 'http://moxune.com');
echo 'Sending initial request' . PHP_EOL;
$aHeaders = get_headers("http://420proxy.info");
foreach($aHeaders as $sHeader) {
if(stripos($sHeader, 'set-cookie') !== false) {
// extract the cookie from the first response
$aCookie = explode(':', $sHeader);
$sCookie = trim(array_pop($aCookie));
$oCookie = http_parse_cookie($sCookie);
echo 'Cookie extracted, trying to POST now' . PHP_EOL;
// OK, now let's try the POST request
$ch = curl_init('http://420proxy.info/includes/process.php?action=update');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, '420.proxy.info');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIE, $sCookie);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Expect: 100-continue'));
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIE, http_build_cookie((array)$oCookie));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, array(
'u' => TARGET_URL,
'allowCookies' => 'off',
'encodeURL' => 'off',
'stripJS' => 'on'
)
);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
die(var_dump($response));
}
}