Using PHP for cross-domain post data

Question

Using PHP, is it possible to send post data to another domain without using a form?

header('location:https://domain.com/webservice/?data=My Data');

We can't use the solution above because the GET data is stored in the persons browser history and in some of our server logs (not ideal).

curl_init();

We can't use this solution because the /webservice/ uses a header('location:') to redirect the user to a final landing page and curl_init() captures the data instead of responding to it -- our goal is to have the user change domains along with the post data. The /webservice/ also creates a new session with the user which is why they need to be at that physical location with the post data.

Anyone have an outside-the-box idea?

Answer 1

You can make a POST request from your PHP program (see the cURL library) but you can't redirect the browser in such a way that it will make a POST request.

The only way to do that is to generate an HTML document with a form and POST that (which can be done using JS).

Answer 2

Here's my solution, provided both domains can share the same database.

Steps:

1. Generate a value to uniquely identify this session. Better use some simple encoding.
2. Write the data to a table in the database. If not individual fields, even an xml structure in a BLOB field would do, but that's extra work.
3. pass the identifier using a query string to the second domain and get the data from the DB

Additionally you can have a status field to time-out the data and delete the record if it's not read within a certain time period.

Well, this is only an idea but I think it's a workable one that hides your data to some extent compared to sending it all in the query string.