使用PHP Curl中的浏览器cookie登录网站

Question

I'm trying to get some data from a website, this data is only available for signed users, but I'm not able to sign-in using CURL because it uses CAPTCHA, so I'm trying to use the cookies that are generated by me signing up on a browser to let CURL access the pages that are only allowed to signed users.

So let's say that I've copied all cookies that this website has generated when I logged in using my browser to a cookie.txt file. I have two questions:

In what format should I store the cookies in cookie.txt?

How can I load these cookies for CURL to use?

 $curl = curl_init();

 //load cookies from cookie.txt code

 curl_setopt($curl,CURLOPT_URL,$url); 
 curl_setopt($curl,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,TRUE);
 curl_setopt($curl,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,10); 
 curl_setopt($curl,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $userAgent); 
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, TRUE);
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10); 

 $contents = curl_exec($curl);
 curl_close($curl);
 echo $contents;

Edit 1

 $url="https://google.com";
 $curl = curl_init();
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, '/Testing/cookie.txt'); 
 curl_setopt($curl,CURLOPT_URL,$url); 
 curl_setopt($curl,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,TRUE);
 curl_setopt($curl,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,10); 
 curl_setopt($curl,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $userAgent); /
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE); 
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, TRUE); 
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10);   


 $contents = curl_exec($curl);
 curl_close($curl);
 echo  $contents;

Tried the above code to get an example of the cookie file, but it seems like cookie.txt remain empty.

Edit 2

I changed the path for '/Testing/cookie.txt' to __DIR__."/cookie.txt" and the cookies where generated in the file, I will try to modify them and use COOKIEFILE and see if it will work.

Edit 3

Followed the answer provided below, and it worked as intended.

Answer 1

Try to add options for save cookies:

curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, 'cookies.txt');
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, 'cookies.txt');

Answer 2

To verify the format of a cookie file: You can set

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, "path_to_the_cookie_file")

next run a CURL request to any website that sets cookies, then check the format of the set cookie file.

To send your cookies: Then build your cookie file with the desired cookies and use the setting

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, "path_to_the_cookie_file")

to make your CURL request send the cookies.

Edit #1: From the official PHP documentation ( http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt.php ):

The cookie file can be in Netscape format, or just plain HTTP-style headers dumped into a file.

Edit #2: this is an example of a cookie file generated by CURL ( source ):

# Netscape HTTP Cookie File
# This file was generated by libcurl! Edit at your own risk.
.auto.com   TRUE    /   FALSE   1452087781  ___suid 2ecfe4287cbeacd8399eaf98bec9ce0b.59089b9d033bc7c6dce8ea2fca139920
.auto.com   TRUE    /   FALSE   1452865380  all7_user_region_confirmed  1
.auto.com   TRUE    /   FALSE   1452865380  geo_location    a%3A3%3A%7Bs%3A7%3A%22city_id%22%3Ba%3A0%3A%7B%7Ds%3A9%3A%22region_id%22%3Ba%3A1%3A%7Bi%3A0%3Bi%3A89%3B%7Ds%3A10%3A%22country_id%22%3Ba%3A0%3A%7B%7D%7D
.auto.com   TRUE    /   FALSE   1423921380  autoru_sid  ee094d60fa32eada_daf2da69dc79a59b7c8702a29554abbc
.auth.auto.com  TRUE    /   FALSE   1421329026  autoru_sid  
.auth.auto.com  TRUE    /   FALSE   1421329026  autoru_sid_key  
.auto.com   TRUE    /   FALSE   1421329026  cc6882cb6b6f0c912cf9589734fcc1e6    
.auto.com   TRUE    /   FALSE   1452865027  user_name   igor.savinkin5%40gmail.com
.auto.com   TRUE    /   FALSE   1452865027  username   igor.savinkin5%40gmail.com

Edit #3: What are all those entries in my cookies.txt file? ( http://www.cookiecentral.com/faq/#3.5 )

From left-to-right, here is what each field represents:

domain - The domain that created AND that can read the variable.

flag - A TRUE/FALSE value indicating if all machines within a given domain can access the variable. This value is set automatically by the browser, depending on the value you set for domain.

path - The path within the domain that the variable is valid for.

secure - A TRUE/FALSE value indicating if a secure connection with the domain is needed to access the variable.

expiration - The UNIX time that the variable will expire on. UNIX time is defined as the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00 GMT.

name - The name of the variable.

value - The value of the variable.