CURL request in PHP between two containers?

Question

I have a proxy container that makes a curl request to an api container. Below is the curl request for the proxy container:

    $postRequest = [
        'email' => $_POST['email'],
        'password' => $_POST['password']
        ];
    pretty_var_dump($postRequest);
        
        $curl = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://api:80');
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_request);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $post_request);
        $curl_response = curl_exec($curl);
        curl_close($curl);
        
        $response = json_decode($curl_response, true);

        pretty_var_dump($response);

This is the code for the api file:

<?php

// return api results
header('Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8');

include_once('functions.php');
include_once('config.php');


$conn = new mysqli($host, $user, $pass, $mydatabase);
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
} else {
    echo "Connected to MySQL server successfully!";
}


$email = $_POST['email'];
$signin_password = $_POST['password'];




$select_query = "SELECT user_password, user_id, user_email, user_status FROM user_login WHERE user_email = '{$email}'";

echo $select_query;
$result = $conn->query($select_query);


if (isset($result)) {
    $result = $result->fetch_all(MYSQLI_ASSOC);
    pretty_var_dump($result);
    if (isset($result[0])) {
        $result = $result[0];

        if (isset($result['user_password']) && $result['user_password']) {
            if ($result['user_password']) {
                if (isset($result['user_status']) && $result['user_status'] === "1" && isset($result['user_id'])) {
                    $_SESSION['loggedIn'] = $result['user_status'];
                    response(['user_id' => $result['user_id'], 'session' => $result['user_status']], 200, 'Sign in successful');
                } elseif (isset($result['user_status']) && $result['user_status'] === "2" && isset($result['user_id'])) {
                    $_SESSION['loggedIn'] = $result['user_status'];
                    response(['user_id' => $result['user_id'], 'session' => $result['user_status']], 200, 'Sign in successful');
                }
            } else {
                $_SESSION['loggedIn'] = false;
                response('N/A', 401, 'Password incorrect');
            }
        }
    } else {
        response('N/A', 401, 'Email address not found');
    }
}

For some reason the api file isn't reading the POST data from curl and so every time returns null. MYSQLI, curl have both been installed, and if the API file is manually passed correct usernames and passwords it works perfectly.

Any help would be much appreciated!

EDIT I have updated my code for the curl request however i am still recieving null values back. The api code remains unchanged. Is there something obvious here i am missing?

        $email = $_POST['email'];
        $password = $_POST['password'];

        // $data = http_build_query($postRequest);
        $data = '{"email":"'.$email.'", "password":"'.$password.'"}';

        $headers = array(
            "Content-Type: application/json",
            "Accept: application/json",
         );
        

        pretty_var_dump($data);

        
        $curl = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://127.0.0.1:86');
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
        $curl_response = curl_exec($curl);
        curl_close($curl);
        
        $response = json_decode($curl_response, true);

        pretty_var_dump($response);

Answer 1

UPDATE

I doubt you need these headers. The Accept: is ok but that is not what a Browser uses.

    $headers = array(
        "Content-Type: application/json",
        "Accept: application/json",
     );

And the Content-Type is wrong. Content-Type is included in the response header, this is the request header.

And it needs to be a key value. You just have a string. $headers = array('Accept: ' => 'application/json');

In the email header those need to be fixed.

 $data = "email=$email&password=$password";

In the response you can add

header("Content-Type: application/json");

END OF UPDATE

---

---

I just got done posting this on another question. Looks like you could use it too.

You have a problem here for sure. I doubt $post_request belongs in both the CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS and CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER.

  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_request);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $post_request)

Two ways to make your post data.

$post = 'key1=value1&key2=value2&key3=value3';
$post = array('key1'=>value1,'key2'=>value2,'key3'=>'value3');

depending on the data you may need to use urlencode()

$post = urlencode($post);

I do a lot of curl these are my standard post options

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING,"");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $request);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING,"");

these are my troubleshooting options

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 10);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT,10);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR,true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $request);

You NEED to see the request (out) and response headers (in), so you NEED these these two options.
These two option must come out after fixing the problem.

curl_setopt($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);

If it's HTTPS you need this one:

curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

I always make my own request headers. You can remove that option, it's not mandatory.

$request = array();
$request[] = "Host: www.example.com";
$request[] = "Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8";
$request[] = "User-Agent: MOT-V9mm/00.62 UP.Browser/6.2.3.4.c.1.123 (GUI) MMP/2.0";
$request[] = "Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5";
$request[] = "Connection: keep-alive";
$request[] = "Cache-Control: no-cache";
$request[] = "Pragma: no-cache";