How to use cURL to download a file secured using HTTP digest authentication in PHP?

Question

I've having trouble downloading a file which is secured using HTTP digest authentication. I've managed to get a command line version of curl to work:

curl --location -u Myusername:mypassword -C - --digest -k https://www.thefile.com/file.xml.gz > /location/to/download/file.xml.gz

However, when I've attempted to connect using PHP cURL, I just don't get anything, nor have I figured out how to specify where to download the file (if it ever does connect successfully):

$username = "Myusername";
$password = "mypassword";
$url = "https://www.thefile.com/file.xml.gz";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_DIGEST);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
$info = curl_getinfo($ch);
curl_close($ch);
print_r($output);
print_r($info);

Can anyone shed any light on how to conver the above cURL command line version into a PHP version? I'm stuck on what i've done wrong/missing.

Thanks!

Answer 1

To specify output file location you need could create a local file handle to write out the actual file data, to store it locally.

Add the following to your example above...

$filename = "file.xml.gz";
$filehandle = fopen($filename, "w+");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $filehandle);

After the curl_close

fclose($filehandle);

To debug your digest authentication, enable write header. This gives you another file with the headers returned. Generally a 401 unauthorized, with a new nonce value, then a 200 ok when the new digest is sent.

$headerfilename = "file.xml.gz.header";
$headerfilehandle = fopen($headerfilename, "w+");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_WRITEHEADER, $headerfilehandle);

After the curl_close

fclose($headerfilehandle);