sending data via post using php

Anon

i need to send data to another machine/server via the post method. i'm using php and i don't have much experience using post. how does one send a string like this: http://www.blahblah.com/blah/someurl?userid=abc&password=funn
y&fullname=abcf%20def&street1=510%20Mansion%20Ct&
city=Santa%20Clara

regards

drew

yelvington

That's not a post. That's a get. And it works just fine with fopen(), file(), et cetera, as in the manual.

Anon

Here is a function I have to do just that.

////
// Calls the page we are requesting and returns a string with the data returned
//
// Parameters: $page = the url of the page to call
// $data = the data to post to the url in an array of "NAME" "VALUE"
////
function callpage($page, $data) {
// Parse $page into it's component parts
$url = parse_url($page);

// Build the request string
$request = $data[0]["NAME"]."=".urlencode($data[0]["VALUE"]);

for ($i = 1; $i <= count($data); $i++) {
$request .= '&'.$data[$i]["NAME"]."=".urlencode($data[$i]["VALUE"]);
}

// Build the header
$header = "POST ".$url["path"]." HTTP/1.0\n";
$header .= "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\n";
$header .= "Content-length: " . strlen($request) . "\n\n";

// Open the connection
$fp = fsockopen($url["host"], 80, $err_num, $err_msg);

if ($fp) {
fputs($fp, $header.$request);

  while (!feof($fp)) {
     $response .= fgets($fp, 4096);
     }
  }

fclose($fp);

return $response;
}

Be sure you know what you are getting back, cause this will return all of the HTTP header information also and you will need to do something with it.

bbbear

Hi,

I need to do something similar where I need to invoke a script from another server automatically. Sort of like a "server-to-server" talk application.

I have not found any solution yet and thought to consult you.

I've tried various ways but still couldn't get one done so far. I've used fopen but it doesn't support request that's out of proxy. I'm hoping to try your solution out but I'm having difficulty to understand your code. Can I ask for your help ? [ sorry, I wasn't been into PHP long]

I wonder if there's any other way that I can adopt to automatically invoke a script that's outside of a proxy from another server ?

Thank you for helping.

Regards,

Anon

Sure what are your questions?

bbbear

Hi, my question is,

I need to invoke a PHP script that sits outside of the intranet ( an external server ) from my local machine.

I've tried using fopen but it only support intranet direction. So, I'm asking if there's any other ways, except fopen, that I can call a script automatically ?

Here's the script that I've adopted:

<?
//filename: posttohost.php

    function PostToHost($host, $path, $data)
    {
            $fp = fsockopen($host, 80);
            printf("Open!\n");
            fputs($fp, "POST $path HTTP/1.1\n");
            fputs($fp, "Host: $host\n");
            fputs($fp, "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\n");
            fputs($fp, "Content-length: ".strlen($data)."\n");
            fputs($fp, "Connection: close\n\n");
            fputs($fp, "$data");
            printf("Sent!\n");

            while(!feof($fp))
            {
                    $res .= fgets($fp, 128);
            }
            printf("Done!\n");
            fclose($fp);

            return $res;
    }

    // Test the function
    $query_string = "login=bbbear&var=abctesting";
    printf("Go!\n");

    // Change this line before you test it on your server
    print $x = PostToHost("192.xxx.xxx.xxx", "/path/to/project/test.php", $query_string);

What I'm doing at the above is I'm trying to run a script named 'test.php' that sits on another server. However this function only support internal host. Anything outside proxy, that will not work. Any idea of how to get things around ?

Thank you very much.

Regards,

Anon

Forgive my ignorance, but, how could I adapt this to post to a CGI on another webserver and return the data from it?

do I just do:

callpage(www.site.com/cgi-bin/file.cgi, NAME=field1 VALUE=2972)

???

Also, how do I pass more than one NAME/VALUE Pair to the same request?

TIA!

Anon

The $data in the callpage function is a multi-dimensional array. So if you want to send multiple name/value pairs you would just fill them up in an array.

$data[0]["NAME"] = "name"
$data[0]["VALUE"] = "Rob"
$data[1]["NAME"] = "subject"
$data[1]["VALUE"] = "RE: sending data via post using php"

And so on.

The function will return something that looks like this.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 12:23:25 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) PHP/4.0.4pl1 mod_oas/5.1/ X-Powered-By: PHP/4.0.4pl1 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html <HEAD> <TITLE>PHPBuilder.com - The Resource For PHP Developers</TITLE> <META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="PHP, resource, for, php, developers"> <META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="PHP Developer, Web Developer, The Resource For PHP Developers"> <STYLE TYPE="text/css"> <!-- BODY, TH, TD, OL, UL, LI { font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium; } H1 { font-size: 145%; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }

That's just a snippet from what I get when I call www.phpbuilder.com with this script.