The CURL User Agent - php

Question

So how can I check using codeigniter if the client is curl, and then return something different for it?

Answer 1

You can fake the user-agent when using cURL, so it's pointless depending on the user-agent sent when you KNOW it's a cURL request.
For example: I recently wrote an app which gets the pagerank of a url from google. Now Google doesn't like this, so it allows only a certain user agent to access its pagerank servers. Solution? Spoof the user-agent using cURL and Google will be none the wiser.
Moral of the story: cURL user agents are JUST NOT reliable.
If you still want to do this, then you should be able to get the passed user agent just like normal
$userAgent=$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
EDIT A quick test proved this:
dumpx.php:
<?php
$url="http://localhost/dump.php";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
if($_GET['u']==y) {
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "booyah!");
}
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 60);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST,'GET');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
$exec=curl_exec ($ch);
?>
dump.php:
<?php
var_dump($_SERVER);
?>
Case 1: http://localhost/dumpx.php?u=y
'HTTP_USER_AGENT' => string 'booyah!' (length=7)
Case 2: http://localhost/dumpx.php?u=n
No $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']
This proves that there is no default user agent for curl: it will just not pass it in the request header

Answer 2

If you want to detect bots you can not rely on user agent. Best practices are:
Check, that your visitor runs js (not all human users also do).
Check, that your visitor loads additional files linked to webpage (css, images, etc.)
Check visitor timeouts. Humans usualy don't load 10 pages per second.

Answer 3

cURL stands for - Client URL Library and the whole point of it is to be able to make requests that are identical to what a client would make.
The only thing you can do is detect the information that is part of the request, such as the IP address, HTTP Request Headers, cookies/session id cookie, URL (path/page), and any post/get data. If the person using curl to make the request is doing it from an expected IP address and is supplying any expected header/cookie/token/URL/post/get values, then you would not be able to distinguish a curl request from a browser making the request.

Answer 4

You can spoof or set a custom user agent header when using cURL, so it wouldn't be reliable.
Otherwise, you can do this:
if(strtolower($this->input->server('HTTP_USER_AGENT', true)) == 'curl')
{
// Is using cURL
}
This would only occur if the cURL request contained curl in the user agent header.
As far as I know, there is no default user agent set when doing a curl request.