php curl post $_FILES issue

Question

I'm trying to send a .txt file via php curl post request to get its contents but no success.

The point is that if I make a var_dump($_FILES) as $result being $result the curl_exec($ch) response it shows me an empty array but if I try it with $_POST:

array(
    [uploaded_file] => 
        [name] => 'absolute/path/to/file.txt'
        [mime] => 'text/plain'
        [postname] => 'file.txt'
)

How can I pass that file as a $_FILES variable?

This is my curl send.php curl script:

$filedata = curl_file_create('../path/to/file.txt', 'text/plain', 'file.txt');

$array = array(
    'file' => $filedata
)

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://domain_name.com/url/to/script.php');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $array);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SAFE_UPLOAD, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

This is the receive.php script:

if(file_exists($_FILES['uploaded_file']['tmp_name']) && is_uploaded_file($_FILES['uploaded_file']['tmp_name'])){
    $contents = file_get_contents($_FILES['uploaded_file']['tmp_name']);
    $data = explode('/',$contents);
}

but it's never entering the if statement...

and why are you checking for a temp file to see if it exists? you're looking for the actual file here. — Funk Forty Niner, Jan 17 '18 at 15:51
@FunkFortyNiner there are no errors. neither `error_log` or `curl_error($ch)` — molinet, Jan 17 '18 at 15:52
@FunkFortyNiner I've been reading various websites about how to use curl php and they tell that file is retrieve with `$_FILES` variable so that's why I was using that.. — molinet, Jan 17 '18 at 15:54
@FunkFortyNiner could you tell me how my code need to look like? Cause I'm still trying to make it work.. — molinet, Jan 18 '18 at 07:49

user2342558 · Answer 1 · 2018-01-17T16:05:54.453

0

You can't pass the file via cURL to make it appear in the $_FILES variable.

That is because the $_FILES variable is used for uploaded files using an HTML form submission.

For security reasons, the file must be encrypted first, and decrypted in the receiver page. I suggest you to use an encryption method that let you to choose the encryption's key, such as sha1.

You can find more informations here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/15200804/2342558

edited Jan 17 '18 at 16:05

answered Jan 17 '18 at 15:51

user2342558

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Then how can I send its contents to a remote server via curl? – molinet Jan 17 '18 at 15:53
That doesn't tell me how to get the file in the remote server script... – molinet Jan 17 '18 at 16:07
Inside the post you can find another link: http://blog.derakkilgo.com/2009/06/07/send-a-file-via-post-with-curl-and-php/ here is explained how to do that. – user2342558 Jan 17 '18 at 16:11
I'm currently using php7 so `'@'` is deprecated. Should I try using that and setting `CURLOPT_SAFE_UPLOAD` to false? – molinet Jan 17 '18 at 16:14

php curl post $_FILES issue

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