Server to Server Posting

mnewhart

I am new to PHP, but have been programming for years so it is very easy to translate. I want to build a php that receives info from a payment gateway, i.e. PayPal (IPN) or Authorize (AIM) where their server, after the customer submits, sends info to a php on my server via POST. In both API's they require you to send the info right back with some additional fields for verification.

What is the command in PHP that submits a POST form back to their server without any user intervention? Is this the sockets functions or fopen functions??? I have combed the whole php manual and this forum (I love the forum) for the same issue but could not find what I was looking for. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks...

shawon22

i don't think php has any function for that but u could try cURL

driverdave

<?php
function postVars($host,$path,$data,$port)
{
	$socket = fsockopen($host,$port,&$errno,&$errstr);
	if($socket)
	{
		fputs($socket, "POST $path HTTP/1.1\n");
		fputs($socket, "Host: $host\n");
		fputs($socket, "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\n");
		fputs($socket, "Content-length: " . strlen($data) . "\n");
		fputs($socket, "User-Agent: PHP\n");
		fputs($socket, "Connection: close\n\n");
		fputs($socket, $data);

	while (!feof($socket))
	{
		$readSocket .= fgets($socket,128);
	}
	fclose($socket);

The rest of this function does a bunch of messy things I use to read url encoded GET vars from my POST result. But it should be trivial to finish this up.

mnewhart

Thanks driverdave. I thought I saw some examples like this in the coding section of this news group.

Where you use the HTTP 1.1, can this be an HTTPS (secure) post?

I know these are headers, is there a place on W3C or in the PHP manual that explains what these headers are?

And lastly, some of the sockets I would have to connect to are going to have to be a specific port. Would you insert that into the $path variable like this:

$path='https://www.paypal.com:432/process.pl';

Notice the red port section. I am not sure about this but think it is correct. Let me know, thanks!

mnewhart

oops!!

driverdave, I should have read your example a little better. I see where to put the port for the socket... No need for reply. Thanks.