Why php curl does not save cookie in my cookiefile?

Question

I'm trying to save a cookie in the curl cookiejar. I've simplified my code but its not working.

<?php

$cookie_file = './cookies.txt';

if (! file_exists($cookie_file) || ! is_writable($cookie_file)){
    echo 'Cookie file missing or not writable.';
    exit;
}//cookie_file is writable, so this is not the issue

$ch = curl_init (html_entity_decode("http://localhost/kiala_test/setcookie.php"));
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookie_file);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
$output = curl_exec ($ch);
echo $output;
?> 

setcookie.php

<?php 
$value = 'something from somewhere';
setcookie("TestCookie", $value);

?>

received header

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 12:10:37 GMT Server: Apache/2.4.4 (Win64) PHP/5.4.12 X-Powered-By: PHP/5.4.12 Set-Cookie: TestCookie=something+from+somewhere Content-Length: 0 Content-Type: text/html

so the testcookie is in the header but my cookiefile stays empty. What I'm doing wrong? what can I try to make this example work? thank you!

Answer 1

When setting CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, you need to use an absolute path. You can do this easily by using:

curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, realpath($cookie_file) );

Reference: cannot use cookies in cURL PHP

Answer 2

As reference about CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR:

The name of a file to save all internal cookies to when the handle is closed, e.g. after a call to curl_close.

So, in your code didn't used curl_close.

Use curl_close($ch); after curl_exec, for save cookies in jar file.

Answer 3

Yes realpath works, but remember that (thanks to php.net) before second call of curl_exec, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE should be the same as in previous setting of CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR - because it is used for reading from "jared" file :)

//my working snippet for one php file:
//....
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, realpath('test2-cookie.txt'));
$content = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch); 
$ch = curl_init();  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, realpath('test2-cookie.txt'));
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, realpath('test2-cookie.txt'));
$content = curl_exec($ch);//second call