How Can I Handle HTTPS URLs with PHP cURL and Securely Manage SSL Certificate Verification?

PHP cURL and HTTPS

The provided cURL function is an excellent tool for fetching web pages. However, when dealing with HTTPS URLs, it encounters challenges. To resolve this issue, we need to incorporate SSL certificate verification into the options array used by cURL.

By default, cURL verifies the SSL certificate of the remote server to ensure a secure connection. However, our code currently lacks this verification, making it susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. To disable SSL certificate verification and enable HTTPS support, add the following line to the options array:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

Alternatively, you can integrate this directly into the get_web_page() function:

function get_web_page($url) {
    $options = array(
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
        CURLOPT_HEADER => false,
        CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
        CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
        CURLOPT_USERAGENT => "spider",
        CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER => true,
        CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120,
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 120,
        CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
        CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false // Disable SSL Cert checks
    );

    // ... code continues as before ...
}

This addition disables SSL certificate verification, allowing cURL to retrieve data from HTTPS URLs. However, it's important to note that this undermines the security aspect, and it is generally not recommended for production use. For more robust HTTPS support, consider implementing a proper SSL verification mechanism.

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