how to get the cookies from a php curl into a vari

Question

So some guy at some other company thought it would be awesome if instead of using soap or xml-rpc or rest or any other reasonable communication protocol he just embedded all of his response as cookies in the header.

I need to pull these cookies out as hopefully an array from this curl response. If I have to waste a bunch of my life writing a parser for this I will be very unhappy.

Does anyone know how this can simply be done, preferably without writing anything to a file?

I will be very grateful if anyone can help me out with this.

Answer 1

someone here may find it useful. hhb_curl_exec2 works pretty much like curl_exec, but arg3 is an array which will be populated with the returned http headers (numeric index), and arg4 is an array which will be populated with the returned cookies ($cookies["expires"]=>"Fri, 06-May-2016 05:58:51 GMT"), and arg5 will be populated with... info about the raw request made by curl.

the downside is that it requires CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER to be on, else it error out, and that it will overwrite CURLOPT_STDERR and CURLOPT_VERBOSE, if you were already using them for something else.. (i might fix this later)

example of how to use it:

<?php
header("content-type: text/plain;charset=utf8");
$ch=curl_init();
$headers=array();
$cookies=array();
$debuginfo="";
$body="";
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER,false);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,true);
$body=hhb_curl_exec2($ch,'https://www.youtube.com/',$headers,$cookies,$debuginfo);
var_dump('$cookies:',$cookies,'$headers:',$headers,'$debuginfo:',$debuginfo,'$body:',$body);

and the function itself..

function hhb_curl_exec2($ch, $url, &$returnHeaders = array(), &$returnCookies = array(), &$verboseDebugInfo = "")
{
    $returnHeaders    = array();
    $returnCookies    = array();
    $verboseDebugInfo = "";
    if (!is_resource($ch) || get_resource_type($ch) !== 'curl') {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException('$ch must be a curl handle!');
    }
    if (!is_string($url)) {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException('$url must be a string!');
    }
    $verbosefileh = tmpfile();
    $verbosefile  = stream_get_meta_data($verbosefileh);
    $verbosefile  = $verbosefile['uri'];
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_STDERR, $verbosefileh);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
    $html             = hhb_curl_exec($ch, $url);
    $verboseDebugInfo = file_get_contents($verbosefile);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_STDERR, NULL);
    fclose($verbosefileh);
    unset($verbosefile, $verbosefileh);
    $headers       = array();
    $crlf          = "\x0d\x0a";
    $thepos        = strpos($html, $crlf . $crlf, 0);
    $headersString = substr($html, 0, $thepos);
    $headerArr     = explode($crlf, $headersString);
    $returnHeaders = $headerArr;
    unset($headersString, $headerArr);
    $htmlBody = substr($html, $thepos + 4); //should work on utf8/ascii headers... utf32? not so sure..
    unset($html);
    //I REALLY HOPE THERE EXIST A BETTER WAY TO GET COOKIES.. good grief this looks ugly..
    //at least it's tested and seems to work perfectly...
    $grabCookieName = function($str)
    {
        $ret = "";
        $i   = 0;
        for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($str); ++$i) {
            if ($str[$i] === ' ') {
                continue;
            }
            if ($str[$i] === '=') {
                break;
            }
            $ret .= $str[$i];
        }
        return urldecode($ret);
    };
    foreach ($returnHeaders as $header) {
        //Set-Cookie: crlfcoookielol=crlf+is%0D%0A+and+newline+is+%0D%0A+and+semicolon+is%3B+and+not+sure+what+else
        /*Set-Cookie:ci_spill=a%3A4%3A%7Bs%3A10%3A%22session_id%22%3Bs%3A32%3A%22305d3d67b8016ca9661c3b032d4319df%22%3Bs%3A10%3A%22ip_address%22%3Bs%3A14%3A%2285.164.158.128%22%3Bs%3A10%3A%22user_agent%22%3Bs%3A109%3A%22Mozilla%2F5.0+%28Windows+NT+6.1%3B+WOW64%29+AppleWebKit%2F537.36+%28KHTML%2C+like+Gecko%29+Chrome%2F43.0.2357.132+Safari%2F537.36%22%3Bs%3A13%3A%22last_activity%22%3Bi%3A1436874639%3B%7Dcab1dd09f4eca466660e8a767856d013; expires=Tue, 14-Jul-2015 13:50:39 GMT; path=/
        Set-Cookie: sessionToken=abc123; Expires=Wed, 09 Jun 2021 10:18:14 GMT;
        //Cookie names cannot contain any of the following '=,; \t\r\n\013\014'
        //
        */
        if (stripos($header, "Set-Cookie:") !== 0) {
            continue;
            /**/
        }
        $header = trim(substr($header, strlen("Set-Cookie:")));
        while (strlen($header) > 0) {
            $cookiename                 = $grabCookieName($header);
            $returnCookies[$cookiename] = '';
            $header                     = substr($header, strlen($cookiename) + 1); //also remove the = 
            if (strlen($header) < 1) {
                break;
            }
            ;
            $thepos = strpos($header, ';');
            if ($thepos === false) { //last cookie in this Set-Cookie.
                $returnCookies[$cookiename] = urldecode($header);
                break;
            }
            $returnCookies[$cookiename] = urldecode(substr($header, 0, $thepos));
            $header                     = trim(substr($header, $thepos + 1)); //also remove the ;
        }
    }
    unset($header, $cookiename, $thepos);
    return $htmlBody;
}

function hhb_curl_exec($ch, $url)
{
    static $hhb_curl_domainCache = "";
    //$hhb_curl_domainCache=&$this->hhb_curl_domainCache;
    //$ch=&$this->curlh;
    if (!is_resource($ch) || get_resource_type($ch) !== 'curl') {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException('$ch must be a curl handle!');
    }
    if (!is_string($url)) {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException('$url must be a string!');
    }

    $tmpvar = "";
    if (parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST) === null) {
        if (substr($url, 0, 1) !== '/') {
            $url = $hhb_curl_domainCache . '/' . $url;
        } else {
            $url = $hhb_curl_domainCache . $url;
        }
    }
    ;

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    $html = curl_exec($ch);
    if (curl_errno($ch)) {
        throw new Exception('Curl error (curl_errno=' . curl_errno($ch) . ') on url ' . var_export($url, true) . ': ' . curl_error($ch));
        // echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch);
    }
    if ($html === '' && 203 != ($tmpvar = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE)) /*203 is "success, but no output"..*/ ) {
        throw new Exception('Curl returned nothing for ' . var_export($url, true) . ' but HTTP_RESPONSE_CODE was ' . var_export($tmpvar, true));
    }
    ;
    //remember that curl (usually) auto-follows the "Location: " http redirects..
    $hhb_curl_domainCache = parse_url(curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_EFFECTIVE_URL), PHP_URL_HOST);
    return $html;
}

Answer 2

If you use CURLOPT_COOKIE_FILE and CURLOPT_COOKIE_JAR curl will read/write the cookies from/to a file. You can, after curl is done with it, read and/or modify it however you want.

Answer 3

Although this question is quite old, and the accepted response is valid, I find it a bit unconfortable because the content of the HTTP response (HTML, XML, JSON, binary or whatever) becomes mixed with the headers.

I've found a different alternative. CURL provides an option (CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION) to set a callback that will be called for each response header line. The function will receive the curl object and a string with the header line.

You can use a code like this (adapted from TML response):

$cookies = Array();
$ch = curl_init('http://www.google.com/');
// Ask for the callback.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION, "curlResponseHeaderCallback");
$result = curl_exec($ch);
var_dump($cookies);

function curlResponseHeaderCallback($ch, $headerLine) {
    global $cookies;
    if (preg_match('/^Set-Cookie:\s*([^;]*)/mi', $headerLine, $cookie) == 1)
        $cookies[] = $cookie;
    return strlen($headerLine); // Needed by curl
}

This solution has the drawback of using a global variable, but I guess this is not an issue for short scripts. And you can always use static methods and attributes if curl is being wrapped into a class.

Answer 4

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
    //Return everything
    $res = curl_exec($ch);
    //Split into lines
    $lines = explode("\n", $res);
    $headers = array();
    $body = "";
    foreach($lines as $num => $line){
        $l = str_replace("\r", "", $line);
        //Empty line indicates the start of the message body and end of headers
        if(trim($l) == ""){
            $headers = array_slice($lines, 0, $num);
            $body = $lines[$num + 1];
            //Pull only cookies out of the headers
            $cookies = preg_grep('/^Set-Cookie:/', $headers);
            break;
        }
    }

Answer 5

$ch = curl_init('http://www.google.com/');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
// get headers too with this line
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
// get cookie
// multi-cookie variant contributed by @Combuster in comments
preg_match_all('/^Set-Cookie:\s*([^;]*)/mi', $result, $matches);
$cookies = array();
foreach($matches[1] as $item) {
    parse_str($item, $cookie);
    $cookies = array_merge($cookies, $cookie);
}
var_dump($cookies);

Answer 6

This does it without regexps, but requires the PECL HTTP extension.

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$headers = http_parse_headers($result);
$cookobjs = Array();
foreach($headers AS $k => $v){
    if (strtolower($k)=="set-cookie"){
        foreach($v AS $k2 => $v2){
            $cookobjs[] = http_parse_cookie($v2);
        }
    }
}

$cookies = Array();
foreach($cookobjs AS $row){
    $cookies[] = $row->cookies;
}

$tmp = Array();
// sort k=>v format
foreach($cookies AS $v){
    foreach ($v  AS $k1 => $v1){
        $tmp[$k1]=$v1;
    }
}

$cookies = $tmp;
print_r($cookies);