php cURL POST how to follow location

Question

Hi Guys,

I am in a bit of a rut with a cURL issue. The post works greate, the data is POSTED just fine and received ok, but the url of the posted page never appears in the browser after the cURL session is executed, for example look at the following code:

    $ch = curl_init("http://localhost/eterniti/cart-step-1.php");
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "error=1&em=$em&fname=$fname&lname=$lname&email1=$email1&email2=$email2&code=$code&area=$area&number=$num&mobile=$mobile&address1=$address1&address2=$address2&address3=$address3&suburb=$suburb&postcode=$postcode&country=$country");
    curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

The post works fine and I am taken to the cart-step-1.php where I can process the posted data, HOWEVER the location in the URL address bar of the browser remains that of the script page, in this case proc_xxxxxx.php

Any ideas how to get the URL address to reflect the page I am actually POSTED to?

Thanks a mill

Answer 1

in that case you'll need to do it in html - so your proc_xxxxxx.php returns an html page that contanis a form that actually sends the post data.

what you're currently doing is retrieving a certain page (with parameters) on your server and returning that as the data for the page that the browser requested. your browser still thinks it called proc_xxxxxx.php but the html data it gets back from the server is that from the cart-step-1.php request, but your browser has no way of knowing this.

setting the url in the browser bar to something arbitrary is impossible as it would be an enormous security risk (eg window.url.display = 'http://www.ebay.com/login') :D

Answer 2

After you have done your curl stuff you can redirect the user with header():

header('Location: http://localhost/eterniti/cart-step-1.php');

More complete:

$url = "http://localhost/eterniti/cart-step-1.php";

$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "error=1&em=$em&fname=$fname&lname=$lname&email1=$email1&email2=$email2&code=$code&area=$area&number=$num&mobile=$mobile&address1=$address1&address2=$address2&address3=$address3&suburb=$suburb&postcode=$postcode&country=$country");
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

header('Location: ' . $url);
exit;

Depending on what this site expects on parameters, this might or might not work. If you redirect the browser to this page, it will just be a GET request from the browser. You cannot make the browser sending POST data.

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Only thing that comes to my mind (if you want to make the Browser to send the POST data) is:
Instead of using curl, create a form with all values in hidden fields and show a button that says Continue. Then the user has only to press the button.