Using cURL to start remote site session

[brick]

Hi All,

 

The title may not make very clear what I am trying to achieve, so I'll try and explain it better now.

 

I have 2 sites.  I want to call the login service on site 2 from site 1 using cURL; the URI for site 2 looks like this (and is called via cURL on site 1):

 

http://secondsitedomain.com/remote?username=admin&password=admin

 

This, I was hoping, would log the user into site 2 from site 1 - then show site 2 in an iFrame inside of site 1.

 

However, it doesn't appear to create the logged in session on site 2 when I call that URI via cURL.

 

So, my question is, does a call like the URI above not create the session locally when called via cURL?  Of course it works as expected if the URI is put directly into the browser address bar!  Just not when called via cURL.

 

Any pointers muchly appreciated,

Brick...

 

[JonnoTheDev]

Do you have the following options set:

 

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, '/tmp/cookie.txt');   
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, '/tmp/cookie.txt');

[rhodesa]

No, using CURL starts a session for the server calling it, not the users browser

[rhodesa]

if you have control over the second sites authentication methods, you could try this:

 

Use cURL to access

http://secondsitedomain.com/remote?username=admin&password=admin

and have that (if successful) generate a unique key, using something like:

md5(rand())

store that value on the second server, and then return print it on the page (so the first server gets it as the return value of the cURL request). then, forward the user to the second server like this:

http://secondsitedomain.com/auth.php?key=<put the key from above here>

have the second server look up the key, and allow the person in if it matches.

 

On the second server, make sure this unique key expires shortly after creation (10 seconds should be plenty...30 seconds if you want to be safe)

[brick]

Thanks rhodesa,

 

I took the unique key that expires route and it works a treat.

 

I guess the more thorough approach would be the replication of session between the server making the cURL call and the client.  Maybe I can investigate this if we have time later down the road.

 

Thanks again for your feedback.

 

Brick...