curl form data problem

[kireol]

I'm stumped. I'm playing around with curl trying to fill out a form. I decided to try out the USPS zip code search. http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp and try to find the Whitehouse zip code.

Seems easy enough, right?

Well, I'm missing something important because the form processor returns "temporarily unavailable" always. It wont work for me. What am I doing wrong? I've done everything I think I need to be doing.

thanks 🙂

<?PHP
        $cookie_file_path = "cookies/cookiejar.txt"; // Please set your Cookie File path
        $fp = fopen("$cookie_file_path","w") or die("<BR><B>Unable to open cookie file $mycookiefile for write!<BR>");
        fclose($fp);

    //load form page.
    $ch = curl_init();
    $url = "http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp";
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    $agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)";
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $agent);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $cookie_file_path);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookie_file_path);
    $result = curl_exec ($ch);
    print $result;

    //load page result page.

    $url = "http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/zcl_0_results.jsp";
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
    $mypostfields = urlencode("visited=1&pagenumber=0&address2=1500 PENNSYLVANIA AVE&city=WASHINGTON&state=DC");
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $mypostfields);
    $result = curl_exec ($ch);

    print $result;

    curl_close($ch);
?>

[Weedpacket]

Well, a couple of problems I can see from looking at the code:
1) The street address of the White House is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
2) The URL isn't properly encoded (URLs cannot contain spaces: they have to be encoded as either %20 or +). You're using urlencode() but too late in the process - you're urlencoding the & and = as well, which shouldn't be urlencoded.
3) Trying the page you're linking to with the White House's address, the complete posted form reads

visited=1&pagenumber=0&firmname=&address2=1600+PENNSYLVANIA+AVENUE&address1=&city=WASHINGTON&state=DC&urbanization=&zip5=&submit.x=19&submit.y=9&submit=Find+ZIP+Code

and maybe some of the fields you left out are necessary.
4) Depending on what this code is going to be for, it may be in violation of the USPS's terms of service.