remote login through php

credo_gw

Hello guys!
Need some help with remote logging in. I want when user clicks a button, to call a remote url (which will contain username and password) without this to be visible to the user, then retrieve the session id from a variable (i know the variable's name) which comes when opening that url, and then posting it to a new url which will be the only thing visible to the user.
In a few words, i want to call a url in the background, get a variable from there and then open a new window for the user with that variable in there. Can this be done using php?
Thank you guys for your time in advance!

Pig

If you don't want the user to see what it is, you will have to use $_POST. Just make sure there isn't anything revealing in the source of the form. You can then have the receiving page process whatever you need and send an error, or do a header("Location:"); or javascript for a pop up, or whatever.

credo_gw

Thanx but could you please be a little bit more specific? In case the url that should open in the background is :'http://something.com/login.asp?username=name&password=pass&submit=login' then how should the php code for that background job look like?
Furthermore do you got any ideas of how to retrieve a variable from that page as soon as it opens in the background?
I don't care about passing info in the source code, it's not something critical.
Thanx!

Pig

Well you will have a hard time executing PHP on an ASP page.

If I understand correctly, you want to have the user click a button or a link, and have it open a window wich signs them in (or create a session, or whatever) and displays a specific page.

I am not sure what you mean by:
"how to retrieve a variable from that page as soon as it opens in the background"
Can you be more specific? I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to do. Logging is an invisible process anyway. More details will help.

credo_gw

Well at first thank you for your interest!
Now here is my case: After i manually log in into the remote site, it gives me a session id somehow like: 'sessionid=129ek494i2if943.....' which can also be seen in the page's source code. I need that session id in order to perform some search in that remote site. So, all i want is clicking a button, automatically log in, somehow save the session id that comes with the new page into a variable, and then popup a window containing a url that would have that variable in too (like http://site.com/search.asp?sessionid=129ek49...&search=something)
If it cannot be done in php do you got any idea of making that in html?
If it is not clear to you yet, please let me know.
Once again, thank you!

Pig

OK, I think I understand.

You want the user to click a button, and have it log in to a site to get the session id, and then open a new page but carry that session id with it. In the end you want a seperate window with that session in the query string.

Here are the steps I would take. You'll have to modify them to fit your needs.

Visitor clicks link to open page in new window (or submits form, or whatever). That page then creates the session. If you want to get the session id from the url, then just access it with $_server['query_string']. Then do a meta refresh or a header("Location:...") to the location you ultimately want them at, and just stick the session id in their.

credo_gw

Thanx, it all seems very helpful. You mentioned that i can get the session id from the url, in my case the session id doesnot come in the url but the page's source code. Is there a way to retrieve that?

Pig

Crap, sorry, I wasn't thinking. Once you start the session, you can just use http://us4.php.net/manual/en/function.session-id.php to get it.

credo_gw

Great! So all i have to do is when clicking that button, open the url with the username/password for login, and then add something like:
sid=session_id();
and i will have the session id?
Will it work if the above command is given in my page (i mean where the button is). Do i have to somehow define that it should read the session id from the page that will come next, maybe something like:
sid=child.session_id(); //in case child is called the popup window??

FX_

Hi, I want to perform the same things as described above, BUT I just want to put all of this in an automated script on my webserver. So I login to my account on a remote site, I grab any new topics and put it in an array or something and finally I log off.

So the only difference is I automaticly 'click' a button and I don't have anyone who can see any of this.

Thanx for any reply!

Grtz,

[FX]