Login Using CURL and Maintain Session in PHP Using CURL

To login into a session protected site in PHP using CURL is easy. It is the same as normal data retrieval using CURL with URL and post/get parameters, the only difference is that you will need to specify a cookie file location to save session information. Code example as follows:

	$cookiefile = '/tmp/curl-session';
	$loginUrl = 'http://locahost/test';
	$user = urlencode($username);
	$pass = urlencode($password);

	$ch = curl_init();

	// set URL and other appropriate options
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $loginUrl);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $cookiefile);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookiefile);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "user=$user&pass=$pass");
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 30);

	// grab URL and pass it to the browser
	$output = curl_exec($ch);

Now any subsequent request to the same domain URL using the same cookie file will maintain the session until timed out. Happy PHPing.