Question

Question:
Is it possible to log into a site then read information off the site under that user (in PHP)?

example:
Many websites are dynamic and have php drawing information from databases. Lets say example.com had a login.

While logged in the page example.com/test.php displayed: “hello user”, and when not logged in would display : “you’re not a user sign in here”

Lets say the authentication process was through sessions, the user would login by posting a form with tags “user” and “pass” if correct would start a session that would allow the user to see the message for them on example.com/test.php

Question:
Is it possible to log into a site then read information off the site under that user?

I’ve been looking around and am not sure how to approach this. Anything would help. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

you can (with curl)

        $ckfile = tempnam ("/tmp", "CURLCOOKIE");
        $ch = curl_init("http://example.com/index.php");
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $ckfile);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $ckfile);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        $output = curl_exec ($ch);
        curl_close($ch);


        $ch = curl_init();
        $fields = array(
                'username' => 'genesis',
                'pass' => 'pass',
                'other' => 'post fields'
        );
        foreach($fields as $key=>$value) { $fields_string .= $key.'='.$value.'&'; }
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://example.com/login.php");
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $ckfile);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $ckfile);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST,1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$fields_string);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
        $result = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);

        $ch = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://example.com/logged_page.php");
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $ckfile);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $ckfile);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
        $needed_information = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);