CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpcurlget
pbarney
pbarney

Reputation: 2833

Difference between cURL and web browser?

I am trying to retrieve a web page from the following url:

http://www.medicare.gov/find-a-doctor/provider-results.aspx?searchtype=OHP&specgrpids=922&loc=43615&pref=No&gender=Unknown&dist=25&lat=41.65603&lng=-83.66676

It works when I paste it into a browser, but when I run it through cURL, I receive a page with the following error: "One or more query string parameters of requested url are invalid or has unexpected value, please correct and retry."

It doesn't seem to make a difference if I provide a different userAgent or referrer. There is a redirect, so I use CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION.

Here is my code:

$ch = curl_init($page);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);

$html = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $html;

Any thoughts on why a request like this will work in the browser and not with cURL?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 8217

Answers (2)

pbarney
pbarney

Reputation: 2833

The problem was with cookies. This particular site needed an ASP.NET_SessionId cookie set in order to respond. I added the following to my cURL request:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, 'cookie.txt');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, 'cookie.txt');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIE, 'ASP.NET_SessionId=ho1pqwa0nb3ys3441alenm45; path=/; domain=www.medicare.gov');

I don't know if any session id will work, but it tried a couple random ones and they all worked.

Upvotes: 2

stevedbrown
stevedbrown

Reputation: 8934

Your browser is sending cookies that cURL is not. Check the cookies you are sending to the site using browser tools or Fidler - you'll need to pass the same.

Upvotes: 2

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