Trouble using pycurl with cookies

Question

I try to get data from a website with pycurl. I made a similar script earlier in php(also using curl) and it worked but in python I get empty response. Similar problem was with php - the site takes post data, initializes a session and redirects to result page, but if no cookies are allowed it returns an empty response instead of redirect. I have no access to code on this site. Using COOKIEFILE and COOKIEJAR options solved the problem. This is the php code:

<?php
$anul = 2009;
$idnp = "2000000000000";
$seria_diploma = "AB000000000";
$url = "http://acte.edu.md/handler.php";
$cookie_file = tempnam("tmp", "cookie");
$curl_session = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl_session, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
$post_fields = "an=$anul&idnp=$idnp&=$seria_diploma&Submit=OK"; 
curl_setopt($curl_session, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$post_fields);
curl_setopt($curl_session, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_session, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $cookie_file);
curl_setopt($curl_session, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookie_file);
curl_setopt($curl_session, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($curl_session);
curl_close($curl_session);
echo $result;

Using the same options in python I get empty response with HTTP code 200 instead of 302. Here is the code i use:

  url = "http://acte.edu.md/handler.php"
  post_data = dict({
            "an":2009,
            "idnp":"2000000000000",
            "a":"AB000000000",
            "Submit":"OK"
  })
  buf = StringIO.StringIO()
  c = pycurl.Curl()

  c.setopt(pycurl.URL,url)
  c.setopt(pycurl.WRITEFUNCTION, buf.write)
  #c.setopt(pycurl.CONNECTTIMEOUT,10000)
  cookiefile = os.tempnam(_APP_ROOT_PATH+"temp_files","cookie")
  c.setopt(pycurl.COOKIEFILE, cookiefile)
  c.setopt(pycurl.COOKIEJAR, cookiefile)
  c.setopt(pycurl.FOLLOWLOCATION, 1)
  #c.setopt(pycurl.MAXREDIRS, 5)
  c.setopt(pycurl.POST, 1)
  c.setopt(pycurl.POSTFIELDS, urllib.urlencode(post_data))
  c.setopt(pycurl.VERBOSE, True)
  c.perform()

  response += "ERROR:" + c.errstr()
  response += c.getinfo(pycurl.HTTP_CODE).__str__()+ c.getinfo(pycurl.EFFECTIVE_URL)
  c.close()     

Please tell me if your have any suggestions...

Answer 1

The problem was in invalid POST parameters. If they don't pass validation page returns empty response.