Posted on by mypapit

Sending HTTP POST with php cURL

As promised previously, I’m going to show you how to send HTTP POST request using php cURL extension.

The target form

Let’s say you have a html form like this :

wtf

And this is the source code of the html file :

You can see that the form will submit the query using HTTP POST to “target.php”. Now let’s say you want to write a php script (bot.php) that will automatically send the query bypassing the html form, this is one way to do it (with php libcurl extension)

< ?php
//bot.php
$url = "http://localhost/wtf/target.php";
$ch = curl_init();

// set the target url
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);

// howmany parameter to post
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

// the parameter 'username' with its value 'johndoe'
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,"username=johndoe");


$result= curl_exec ($ch);
curl_close ($ch); 
print $result;

?>

This script will send a HTTP POST request to “target.php” pretending to be a real person sending the “username” parameter as “john doe”.

However this is not entirely convincing since the server side will automatically know that you are using a http script to send the HTTP POST request by analyzing the browser “user-agent” string. The default script will send “(HTTPRetriever/1.0)” as its user-agent.

With a little add-on, you can spoof the user-agent string inside your script just like this :

< ?php
//
// test HTTP POST submitter, using libcurl
//

// the target url which contains scripts that accepts post request
$url = "http://localhost/wtf/target.php";

// we are spoofing Yahoo Seeker bot >:)
$useragent="YahooSeeker-Testing/v3.9 (compatible; Mozilla 4.0; MSIE 5.5; http://search.yahoo.com/)";

$ch = curl_init();

// set user agent
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $useragent);

// set the target url
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);

// howmany parameter to post
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

// the parameter 'username' with its value 'johndoe'
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,"username=johndoe");


// execute curl,fetch the result and close curl connection
$result= curl_exec ($ch);
curl_close ($ch); 

// display result
print $result;

?>

so when your “bot.php” sends the request, the server logs will record that the query was sent by a “Yahoo Seeker bot” instead of a crudely coded php script.

You can spoof other browser as long as you know their user-agent string, refer to my previous post for a collection of browser user-agent strings.

No PHP cURL support?

In this case, you have a few options

  1. Use a server that support php cURL extension
  2. Compile/Install php cURL extension
  3. Use libcurlemu – php cURL extension written in pure php

Well that should cover the short crash course on how to use php cURL extension.

p/s : Although I won’t tell you how to write one directly, this is the basic of building spam bots and auto-submitter. So use your imagination (and the dark side of the force) to write the rest of the code. *evil*

You can download the source code of this tutorial here : http://mypapit.net/pub/libcurltest.zip

php,curl,webdev,libcurl,bots

59 Replies to “Sending HTTP POST with php cURL”

  3. Hello,

    very interesting script.
    Could you provide some advice on how to make a POST request to a jsp form with curl?

    Thanks in advance!

  4. Hello,

    very interesting script.
    Could you provide some advice on how to make a POST request to a jsp form with curl?

    Thanks in advance!

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