Collecting data from a website that uses Ajax/Javascript. - CURL

Question

I'm trying to scrape a search form with curl (via PHP). I thought everything was correct, or close to it, but that doesn't seem the case. To give a little bit of background, I'm trying to collect (or scrape) data from a search form where the user inserts a date range and then submits the search. The results are then shown below the search inputs. The page is using AJAX/JavaScript to load data.

When I run the PHP script, I get nothing back. I've added print_r to see the results, but nothing shows.

Here's my script. All advice is welcome.

<?php
    class Scraper {

        // Class constructor method
        function __construct() {
            $this->useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3';
            $handle = fopen('cookie.txt', 'w') or exit('Unable to create or open cookie.txt file.'."\n");   // Opening or creating cookie file
            fclose($handle);    // Closing cookie file
            $this->cookie = 'cookie.txt';    // Setting a cookie file to store cookie
            $this->timeout = 30; // Setting connection timeout in seconds
        }

        // Method to search and scrape search details
        public function scrapePersons($searchString = '') {

            $searchUrl = 'https://virre.prh.fi/novus/publishedEntriesSearch';

            $postValues = array(
                'businessId' => '',
                'startDate' => '07072016',
                'endDate' => '08072016',
                'registrationTypeCode' => 'kltu.U',
                '_todayRegistered' => 'on',
                'domicileCode' => '091',
                '_domicileCode' => '1',
                '_eventId_search' => 'Search',
                'execution' => 'e2s1',
                '_defaultEventId' => '',
            );

            $search = $this->curlPostFields($searchUrl, $postValues);

            return $search;
        }

        // Method to make a POST request using form fields
        public function curlPostFields($postUrl, $postValues) {
            $_ch = curl_init(); // Initialising cURL session

            // Setting cURL options
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);   // Prevent cURL from verifying SSL certificate
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, TRUE);   // Script should fail silently on error
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION, TRUE); // Use cookies
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);    // Follow Location: headers
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);    // Returning transfer as a string
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $this->cookie);    // Setting cookiefile
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $this->cookie); // Setting cookiejar
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $this->useragent);  // Setting useragent
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_URL, $postUrl);   // Setting URL to POST to
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $this->timeout);   // Connection timeout
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $this->timeout); // Request timeout
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_POST, TRUE);  // Setting method as POST
            curl_setopt($_ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postValues); // Setting POST fields (array)

            $results = curl_exec($_ch); // Executing cURL session
            curl_close($_ch);   // Closing cURL session

            return $results;
        }

        // Class destructor method
        function __destruct() {
            // Empty
        }
    }

    $testScrape = new Scraper();   // Instantiating new object

    $data = json_decode($testScrape->scrapePersons());   // Scraping people records
    print_r($data);
?>

Answer 1

Firstly I'd check to ensure you are allowed to do this.

Assuming you are, the issue is that you are getting a security check form which if you were using a browser would automatically be submitted due to the javascript onload form submission, you'll need to replicate this to make it work.

The output I get is as follows.

<html>
<head>
  <title>Security Check</title></head>
<body onLoad="document.security_check_form.submit()">
<form name="security_check_form" action="j_security_check" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" value="prhanonymous" name="j_username"/>
<input type="hidden" value="*=AQICr82J28VvM2ljVarKvWv3LuibH7WPDyc8EVKuXdfytXrEv/o/MzMP3KfIEq+1Wda1ICP/pDLJQqniyBaRXTXnJGJCJhi2gVIoM0e+rwGEczxoah2+PsKOEnSI6A9j2MQO6/Q4i/vaXHVA7gfjjH7qvz0Fc+Pr7fPiBtJt+2YF3YghUN39cFhoK2O8mjRwTKORojRwcguq74B8Ttd0xyUlYld68t/mplsWv5npwMfT/wfv2XMidoVmB5k/p2rp3XbwlnHpJI3gJJcb5VV58M7frCB0vricZYv3xrKuco6qpMlX9wJeCqrhrMotY0+lisAvmEDIR3YpobE=" name="j_password"/>
</form>
</body>
</html>