cURL problems with PHP

Question

Previosly I have been pulling in some page content via CURL from the BBC site using this code,

    $c = curl_init('http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_conf/conference_north_table/default.stm');

    curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    $html =  curl_exec ($c);
    if (curl_error($c))
        die(curl_error($c));

    $startpos = strpos($html, '<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" class="fulltable">');

    $endpos = strpos($html, '<!-- E IINC -->');
    $length = $endpos - $startpos;
    $rest = substr($html, $startpos,$length);
    $rest = str_replace("border=\"1\" cellpadding=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\"","border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\"", $rest);
    $rest = str_replace('<tr><td colspan="15"><hr/></td></tr>',"", $rest);

    $rest = str_replace('<tr>
      <td colspan="15">
         <div style="padding: 10px 0 0 0;"><img src=" http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/sol/shared/img/tbl_spc.gif" height="2px" width="100%"></div>
      </td>
   </tr>
',"", $rest);

    echo $rest;
    curl_close($c);

Previously this was working fine using php 5.1.3 on an old server we have since migrated the site to a server running 5.4.8, however the above code is not working anymore, is there any reason for this? I cannot see any problem.

If I kill the script at $html I get the following reponse,

LEAGUE TABLE

MOVED PERMANENTLY

The document has moved here.

However if I navigate to the URL through the browser I can view the page fine, so it obviously has not moved anywhere (backed up by the fact the Curl request was working before we migrated servers.

Any error messages? Have you inserted debug statements to see what the values look like? What exactly does "not working anymore" mean? — Olaf Dietsche, Nov 15 '12 at 09:16
good habit to **always** put block code in `{}` brackets. Even one liners like in your case `if (curl_error($c)) ....` - Such habit would save your from troubles in less expected moment — Marcin Orlowski, Nov 15 '12 at 09:20
It may be trying to redirect to another page and not following through. Try http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3519939/make-curl-follow-redirects ? — Maccath, Nov 15 '12 at 09:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 15 '12 at 09:36

1

The address has actually moved. Change the first line with:

$c = curl_init('http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_conf/conference_north_table/default.stm');

The above code now shows me the table with the results.

answered Nov 15 '12 at 09:36

Plamen Nikolov

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 15 '12 at 09:39

1

You must use

curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);

to follow the redirection.

See PHP: curl_setopt for the full list of options.

answered Nov 15 '12 at 09:39

Olaf Dietsche

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cURL problems with PHP

2 Answers2