cURL, php request_headers from Apache2.2 to Oracle App Server - php

Question

I have banged my head on this long enough. I hope someone can help me figure this out. I'm not sure anymore whether my problems are caused by cURL, php, Apache, Oracle or a brain fart.
I'm trying to post to a form on an Oracle server. By hand, I can make a GET-like url that will bring up the correct page. I want to do POST to hide the variables (and there could be a lot of them) and because the originating form's method is POST. Either way I can't get the response via my php/cURL program.
My specific questions:
The obvious one, why doesn't it work?
Why can I do the request by hand and not by program?
Why does the access.log have a GET in there?
Why is my request header being rewritten to include the
/DAD/scheme/app of the Oracle server?
Will my programming ego ever be the same?
Here's my current code:
*<?php
$error_dump = 'stderr.txt';
$error_dump_handle = fopen($error_dump,'a');
$ch = curl_init();
$url = 'http://www2.blah.com/pls/blah/blah.blaQuery';
$url_enc_fields = array(
'LAST_NAME' => 'MacBlahBlah',
'FIRST_NAME' => 'Blahberina',
'CONTAINS' => 'Y',
... and more fields ...
);
$url_enc_fields = http_build_query($url_enc_fields);
//$url = $url.'?'.$url_enc_fields; //previous GET attempt
$content_length = strlen($url_enc_fields);// number of bytes
$content_length = 'Content-Length:' . $content_length;
$headers = array(
'Request: POST ' . $url_enc_fields . 'HTTP/1.1', //An attempt to force the request
'Accept: */*',
'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'Referer:http://blah.com/pls/blah/blah.startup?code1=MM&code2=bleep',
'Expect: ',
$content_length
);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HEADER,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER,$headers);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT,TRUE);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,FALSE);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION,TRUE); // one of many guesses
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT,TRUE);
// NOTE: no cookies or passwords involved
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,180);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_TIMEOUT,180);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_VERBOSE,TRUE);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_STDERR,$error_dump_handle);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_ENCODING,'chunked'); // Added because the response was chunked, no difference
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,TRUE); // Apparently futile
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$url_enc_fields);
$postResult = curl_exec($ch);
$info = curl_getinfo($ch);
$pretty_info = print_r($info,true);
> echo '<br/><pre>'; print_r($info); print_r($url_enc_fields);
> print_r($headers);
echo '</pre>';
$now_time = getdate();$format = '-------------- %f -----------';
fprintf($error_dump_handle,$format,$now_time[0]);
fprintf($error_dump_handle,$pretty_info);
fprintf($error_dump_handle,curl_error($ch));
fclose($error_dump_handle);
curl_close($ch);
?>*
------------ Here is the current logging -------------
From my error dump:
-------------- 1323725891.000000 -----------Array
(
[url] => http://www2.blah.com/pls/blah/blah.blaQuery
[content_type] => text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
[http_code] => 404
[header_size] => 205
[request_size] => 601
[filetime] => -1
[ssl_verify_result] => 0
[redirect_count] => 0
[total_time] => 0.203
[namelookup_time] => 0
[connect_time] => 0.078
[pretransfer_time] => 0.078
[size_upload] => 146
[size_download] => 336
[speed_download] => 1655
[speed_upload] => 719
[download_content_length] => -1
[upload_content_length] => 0
[starttransfer_time] => 0.203
[redirect_time] => 0
**[request_header] => POST /pls/blah/blah.blaQuery HTTP/1.1**
Host: blah.com
Accept-Encoding: chunked
Request: POST LAST_NAME=MacBlahBlah&FIRST_NAME=Blahberina&CONTAINS=Y&...some other fields... HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Referer:http://blah.com/pls/wllpub/blah.startup?code1=MM&code2=bleep
Content-Length:146
From my Apache access.log:
*##.##.##.## - - [12/Dec/2011:14:38:06 -0700] "GET /cgi-bin/mydir/mysubmit_form.php HTTP/1.1" 200 2698 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; rv:8.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/8.0"*
Why is it doing a GET?
The HTML code returned:
http://www2.blah.com/pls/blah/blah.blaQuery
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:03:53 GMT
Server: Oracle-Application-Server-10g/10.1.2.2.0 Oracle-HTTP-Server
Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Not Found
The requested URL pls/blah/blah.blaQuery was not found on this server.
Oracle-Application-Server-10g/10.1.2.2.0 Oracle-HTTP-Server Server at www2 Port 80

Answer 1

try
$fields = array(
'LAST_NAME' => 'MacBlahBlah',
'FIRST_NAME' => 'Blahberina',
'CONTAINS' => 'Y',
... and more fields ...
);
$url_enc_fields = http_build_query($fields);
and then
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,count($fields)); // Apparently futile
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$url_enc_fields);
I didn't check these changes, but this is how I usually do it