Posting to phpBB2 forum with PHP and cURL

Question

I'm trying to post to a phpBB2 forum running on localhost with PHP and cURL. I've handled the logging in alright, it's just the posting that I can't get my head around.

Here's my code:

<?php

$cookieFile = 'C:\xampp\htdocs\cookies\\' . uniqid(true) . '.txt';

// Login
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://localhost/phpbb2/login.php');
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookieFile);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true);
$postVars = array('username' => 'admin', 'password' => 'password', 'autologin' => 'on', 'login' => 'Log in');
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postVars);
$resp = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);

// Parse sid from cookie file
preg_match('/phpbb2mysql_sid\t(.*)/', file_get_contents($cookieFile), $match);
$sId = $match[1];

// Post
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://localhost/phpbb2/posting.php?mode=newtopic&f=1');
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $cookieFile);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true);
$postVars = array('subject' => 'Test post',
                  'message' => 'Test post, please ignore.',
                  'sid' => $sId,
                  'f' => 1,
                  'post' => 'Submit');
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postVars);
$resp = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);

echo $resp;

The cURL sets the cookie fine, and I know the sid parameter I'm sending with my POST request is correct because it's the same one that's in the database. However, when I run this code, phpBB spits out this error: Invalid Session. Please resubmit the form..

I don't get it. I'm grabbing the cookie after I login, sending it with the POST request to create a new topic, yet it says invalid session.

What could be going wrong here?

Answer 1

I'd hazard a guess it is because you execute

curl_close($curl); 
$curl = curl_init();

after logging in, before then posting. You want to delete those two lines and continue using the same curl handle.

BTW: Your phpbb login code worked nicely for me... ;)