[SOLVED] CURL creates new session?

[drewbee]

Hello everyone,

I currently have a curl session that can access hundreds of different pages on a site. One thing I noticed with it is that it is initiating a new session of the server that is accessing. I don't want it to create a million sessions, just use the one it currently has.

 

I am going to guess that if curl_close($ch) is called, then it is is reinitiated curl_init, it restarts the session correct?

 

Is their a way for it to maintain the same connection that I missed somewhere, or do I need to do some if/elses to check for an already open curl session??

 

Thank you for your insight.

 

Drew

[lightningstrike]

Well the only solution I can think of would be to access the website initially, and read the headers to save the cookie. Then save the sessionid to a variable.

 

Then when starting a new cURL session to send in the headers cookie information with the sessionid.

[drewbee]

Yeah, I tried keeping the $ch handle alive but that didn't work either, so it will be what i will have to do.

 

Thanks

[drewbee]

Do you happen to know how the search engines react to this kind of situation, whether they hold the same session while their browsing like crazy bots throughout the site, or if they are just initiating a new session on each grab?.

[lightningstrike]

I'm pretty sure, most search engines ignore javascript and cookie headers. So they usually generate tons of sessions, like googlebot and the yahoo bot who cause message boards guest numbers to skyrocket.

 

Unless of course the website appends the Session id to the links.

[drewbee]

Yeah, that is what I was guessing too. I know all the major boards usually have an entire section of code dedicated to identifying search engines and labeling them (or ignoring them). I guess i'll have to tell people to handle my bot accordingly when it comes to their site.

 

Thanks for the insight.