How to cURL a JSP page

[Ankur Sinha]

I am trying to cURL my university login page. I want users to enter their university id and pass in my website, my website will curl to university website, authenticate and then allow them to login or give error accordingly. But my university portal is a jsp page. And after having posted in StackOverflow and other forums before, this is what I came up with. I need further help on where I am going wrong and how to rectify it.

[code]
<form class="form-horizontal" action="curl.php" method="POST">
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label" for="inputEmail">Username</label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="text" id="inputEmail" placeholder="Username">
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label" for="inputPassword">Password</label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="password" id="inputPassword" placeholder="Password">
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<div class="controls">
<label class="checkbox">
<input type="checkbox"> Remember me
</label>
<button type="submit" class="btn">Sign in</button>
</div>
</div>
</form>
[/CODE]

Now this is my curl.php file:

[CODE]
<?php
$address = "http://evarsity.srmuniv.ac.in/srmswi/usermanager/youLogin.jsp"; //site URL
$post = "username=txtRegNumber&pass=txtPwd"; //Parameters to be sent. Written like GET.
$welcomeMessage = "Welcome..."; //This is the message that is displayed when a login is successful

$options = array(
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)',
CURLOPT_POST => true, //using post
CURLOPT_URL => $address, //where to go
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $post, //input params
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true, //Returns a string value of the request
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false, //Avoid SSL problems
CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE => 'cookie.txt', //Save cookies
CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR => 'cookies.txt' //Cookies located
CURLOPT_USERPWD ==> [username]:[password]);


if (strpos($content, $welcomeMessage) !== false){
/*
Do whatever,I don't know what to do here though
*/
}

curl_close($ch); //close connections
?>
[/CODE]

Please let me know where I am going wrong, why I am not able to login and after logging in, how to log out.

Thank you.

[J.O. Aho]

On 28/10/12 04:12, Ankur Sinha wrote:
> I am trying to cURL my university login page. I want users to enter their university id and pass in my website,
> my website will curl to university website, authenticate and then allow them to login or give error accordingly.

There are quite many people who won't do that, login in to a site from a
third party page, as this can cause login credentials be stolen.

> But my university portal is a jsp page.

This don't make any difference how curl works.

> And after having posted in StackOverflow and other forums before, this
> is what I came up with. I need further help on where I am going wrong and how to rectify it.
>
> [code]
> <form class="form-horizontal" action="curl.php" method="POST">
> <div class="control-group">
> <label class="control-label" for="inputEmail">Username</label>
> <div class="controls">
> <input type="text" id="inputEmail" placeholder="Username">

You will not send any useful data to your curl page, see examples at
w3schools: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp

> </div>
> </div>
> <div class="control-group">
> <label class="control-label" for="inputPassword">Password</label>
> <div class="controls">
> <input type="password" id="inputPassword" placeholder="Password">

You will not send any useful data to your curl page, see examples at
w3schools: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp

> </div>
> </div>
> <div class="control-group">
> <div class="controls">
> <label class="checkbox">
> <input type="checkbox"> Remember me
> </label>
> <button type="submit" class="btn">Sign in</button>
> </div>
> </div>
> </form>
> [/CODE]
>
> Now this is my curl.php file:
>
> [CODE]
> <?php
> $address = "http://evarsity.srmuniv.ac.in/srmswi/usermanager/youLogin.jsp"; //site URL
> $post = "username=txtRegNumber&pass=txtPwd"; //Parameters to be sent. Written like GET.

You need to set the login name and password, in this case you just using
static values txtRegNumber / txtPwd, you need to assign those dynamically.
See http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.basics.php

> $welcomeMessage = "Welcome..."; //This is the message that is displayed when a login is successful
>
> $options = array(
> CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)',
> CURLOPT_POST => true, //using post
> CURLOPT_URL => $address, //where to go
> CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $post, //input params
> CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true, //Returns a string value of the request
> CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false, //Avoid SSL problems
> CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE => 'cookie.txt', //Save cookies
> CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR => 'cookies.txt' //Cookies located
> CURLOPT_USERPWD ==> [username]:[password]);
>

You need to make the connection to the site, see example at php.net:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-init.php

> if (strpos($content, $welcomeMessage) !== false){
> /*
> Do whatever,I don't know what to do here though
> */
> }

You should make error checks, see examples at php.net:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-errno.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-error.php

When you confirm that you have logged in, you have to be sure that the
string you look for don't include HTML tags.

> curl_close($ch); //close connections
> ?>
> [/CODE]
>
> Please let me know where I am going wrong, why I am not able to login and after logging in, how to log out.

Drop the cookie, if you want the university web server to know it, make
a curl request to the logout link/page.


Good luck with your school assignment.

--

//Aho

[Ankur Sinha]

I am making this for my college out of my own interest after conducting a survey. So this is not my assignment and people said they won't sign up freshly and they wanted to login using existing ids and passwords provided by the university.

[Jerry Stuckle]

I agree with J.O. You'll find a lot more people won't sign in using the
credentials from another site. Only those with no concept of security
will do it the way you want.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstu...@attglobal.net
==================

[Denis McMahon]

On Sat, 27 Oct 2012 20:12:03 -0700, Ankur Sinha wrote:

> I am trying to cURL my university login page. I want users to enter
> their university id and pass in my website, my website will curl to
> university website, authenticate and then allow them to login or give
> error accordingly.

As an example, look at the mechanism that e.g. "verified by visa" uses to
enable customers to enter their verification credentials when making
online transactions without those credentials being captured by the
trader or payment processing website.

Rgds

Denis McMahon