cURL,WireShark. Setting headers to post data and get xml - php

Question

Here is the dump from WireShark:
POST /drm/drm_production_v2.php HTTP/1.1
content-length: 278
content-type: text/xml
User-Agent: UserAgent 1.0
Connection: Keep-Alive
Authorization: Basic dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=
host: www.example.com
<methodCall>
<methodName>aMethod</methodName>
<params>
<param>
<value>
<base64>dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=</base64>
</value>
</param>
<param>
<value>
<struct/>
</value>
</param>
</params>
</methodCall>
I have the xml saved into a seperate file. Here's what I am doing:
<?php
function httpsPost($Url, $xml_data, $headers)
{
// Initialisation
$ch=curl_init();
// Set parameters
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FORBID_REUSE, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $Url);
// Return a variable instead of posting it directly
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD,"username:password");
// Activate the POST method
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1) ;
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_USERAGENT,"UserAgent 1.0");
// Request
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $xml_data);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 999);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
// execute the connexion
$result = curl_exec($ch);
// Close it
curl_close($ch);
return $result;
}
$str='username:password';
$auth=base64_encode($str);
$request_file = "./request.xml";
$fh = fopen($request_file, 'r');
$filesize=filesize($request_file);
echo $filesize;
$xml_data = fread($fh,$filesize);
fclose($fh);
$url = 'http://www.example.com';
$header = array();
$header[] = "POST /drm/drm_production_v2.php HTTP/1.1";
$header[] = "Content-type: text/xml";
$header[] = "content-length: ".$filesize. "\r\n";
$header[] = "User-Agent: UserAgent 1.0";
$header[] = "Connection: Keep-Alive";
$header[] = "Authorization: Basic ".$auth;
$header[] = "host: www.example.com";
$Response = httpsPost($url, $xml_data, $header);
echo $Response;
?>
It returns a 'Bad Request' from the server. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

My first guess is that the extra "\r\n" after the content-length header makes the server think that the post content starts there. I'd also change "content-length", "Content-type", and "host" to "Content-Length", "Contnet-Type", and "Host", just in case.
Edit: That, and Ronald Bouman's answer.

Answer 2

I think your argument to
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $xml_data);
is not correct. The postfields option should be URL encoded name/value pairs. From the docs:
"
This can either be passed as a urlencoded string like 'para1=val1&para2=val2&...' or as an array with the field name as key and field data as value. If value is an array, the Content-Type header will be set to multipart/form-data
"
see http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt.php

Answer 3

There's the pcap2curl tool that allows one to convert a pcap file of HTTP requests into cURL.
But if you want to replay some web requests from your browser then you can do it without Wireshark and instead enter Web developer mode in the browser. You then go to the network requests view and right click on the request of interest then, in most modern browsers, there is an option to Copy as cURL after which you can then paste the resulting command into a terminal and rerun the captured command as you see fit using the curl tool. Some browsers (e.g. Mozilla) also offer the option to edit and resend from within the browser.