Getting content body from http post using php CURL

Question

I am trying to debug an http post the I am trying to send from list application. I have been able to send the correct post from php CURL which corectly interfaces with my drupal 7 website and uploads an image.

In order to get this to work in my lisp application I really need to see the content body of my http post I have been able to see the headers using a call like this:

curl_setopt($curl,   CURLOPT_STDERR, $fp);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);

and the headers look the same in my lisp application but I have been unable to examine the body of the post. I have searched online and other people have asked this question but no one posted a response.

The content type of my http post is:

application/x-www-form-urlencoded

I have also tried many http proxy debuging tools but they only ever the http GET to get my php page but never capture the get sent from server once the php code is executed.

EDIT: I have added a code snipet showing where I actually upload the image file.

// file
$file = array(
  'filesize' => filesize($filename),
  'filename' => basename($filename),
  'file' => base64_encode(file_get_contents($filename)),
  'uid' => $logged_user->user->uid,
);

$file = http_build_query($file);

// REST Server URL for file upload
$request_url = $services_url . '/file';

// cURL
$curl = curl_init($request_url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded'));
curl_setopt($curl,   CURLOPT_STDERR, $fp);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1); // Do a regular HTTP POST
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $file); // Set POST data
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, FALSE);  // Ask to not return Header
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_COOKIE, "$cookie_session"); // use the previously saved session
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, TRUE);
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT => true) );
$response = curl_exec($curl);

Answer 1

To get the header the CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT flag needs to be set before curl_exec is called. Then use curl_getinfo with the same flag to get the header after curl_exec.

If you want to see the post data, grab the value you set at CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS

For example:

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://example.com/webservice");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($payload));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT, true);

curl_exec($ch);

$header = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT);

curl_close($ch);

echo "Request-Header:\r\n" . $header . "\r\n";
echo "Request-Body(URL Encoded):\r\n" . http_build_query($payload) . "\r\n";
echo "Request-Body(Json Encoded):\r\n" . json_encode($payload) . "\r\n";

Answer 2

Just send it to a random local port and listen on it.

# terminal 1
nc -l localhost 12345

# terminal 2
php -e
<?php
$curl = curl_init('http://localhost:12345');
// etc

Answer 3

You were close:

The PHP manual instructs that you must call the constant CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT in both curl_setopt and curl_getinfo.

$ch = curl_init($url);
... other curl options ...
curl_setopt($ch,CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT,true);

curl_exec(ch);
//Call curl_getinfo(*args) after curl_exec(*args) otherwise the output will be NULL.
$header_info = curl_getinfo($ch,CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT); //Where $header_info contains the HTTP Request information

Synopsis

• Set curl_setopt
• Set curl_getinfo
• Call curl_getinfo after curl_exec

Answer 4

CURLOPT_VERBOSE should actually show the details. If you're looking for the response body content, you can also use CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, curl_exec() will then return the response body.

If you need to inspect the request body, CURLOPT_VERBOSE should give that to you but I'm not totally sure.

In any case, a good network sniffer should give you all the details transparently.

Example:

$curlOptions = array(
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => TRUE,
    CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => TRUE,
    CURLOPT_VERBOSE => TRUE,
    CURLOPT_STDERR => $verbose = fopen('php://temp', 'rw+'),
    CURLOPT_FILETIME => TRUE,
);

$url = "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/java";
$handle = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt_array($handle, $curlOptions);
$content = curl_exec($handle);
echo "Verbose information:\n", !rewind($verbose), stream_get_contents($verbose), "\n";
curl_close($handle);
echo $content;

Output:

Verbose information:
* About to connect() to stackoverflow.com port 80 (#0)
*   Trying 64.34.119.12...
* connected
* Connected to stackoverflow.com (64.34.119.12) port 80 (#0)
> GET /questions/tagged/java HTTP/1.1
Host: stackoverflow.com
Accept: */*

< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Cache-Control: private
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
< Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 19:27:53 GMT
< Content-Length: 59110
< 
* Connection #0 to host stackoverflow.com left intact

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>



<head>



    <title>Newest &#39;java&#39; Questions - Stack Overflow</title>
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://cdn.sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/favicon.ico">
    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://cdn.sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/apple-touch-icon.png">
    <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="Stack Overflow" href="/opensearch.xml">
...

Answer 5

I think you're better off doing this with a proxy than in the PHP. I don't think it's possible to pull the raw POST data from the PHP CURL library.

A proxy should show you the request and response contents

Answer 6

If you're talking about viewing the response, if you add curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true );, then the document returned by the request should be returned from your call to curl_exec.

If you're talking about viewing the postdata you are sending, well, you should be able to view that anyway since you're setting that in your PHP.

EDIT: Posting a file, eh? What is the content of $file? I'm guessing probably a call to file_get_contents()?

Try something like this:

$postdata = array( 'upload' => '@/path/to/upload/file.ext' );
curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postdata );

You can't just send the file, you still need a postdata array that assigns a key to that file (so you can access in PHP as $_FILES['upload']). Also, the @ tells cURL to load the contents of the specified file and send that instead of the string.