Chris
OwenGriffin
Johannes
terrencebarr
wdorf
Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:13:30
A quick PHP Ajax proxy
I'm in the middle of writing a mashup tutorial for using the Betavine API. It's slow progress. I'm continually getting distracted by bug reports and lengthly meetings.
My mashup uses Javascript to interact with the API. However directly calling the API using Javascript won't work. The browser intercepts and kills any AJAX requests to a remote hosts. So the solution? I wrote a simple proxy in PHP which sits between the Javascript and the Betavine API.
When a request is made the PHP will make the request to the API and return the response in the AJAX call. The Javascript on the web page then fooled into thinking that the AJAX response came from the same host as the web page.
It's a simple technique and is widely used for many mashups.
The code follows:
<?
ob_start();
function logf($message) {
$fd = fopen('proxy.log', "a");
fwrite($fd, $message . "\n");
fclose($fd);
}
?>
<?
$url = $_REQUEST;
logf($url);
$curl_handle = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Owen's AJAX Proxy");
$content = curl_exec($curl_handle);
$content_type = curl_getinfo($curl_handle, CURLINFO_CONTENT_TYPE);
curl_close($curl_handle);
header("Content-Type: $content_type");
echo $content;
ob_flush();
?>
I'm using CURL to make the HTTP request. Notice that I set the User-Agent using
Have fun!
Owen.
My mashup uses Javascript to interact with the API. However directly calling the API using Javascript won't work. The browser intercepts and kills any AJAX requests to a remote hosts. So the solution? I wrote a simple proxy in PHP which sits between the Javascript and the Betavine API.
When a request is made the PHP will make the request to the API and return the response in the AJAX call. The Javascript on the web page then fooled into thinking that the AJAX response came from the same host as the web page.
It's a simple technique and is widely used for many mashups.
The code follows:
<?
ob_start();
function logf($message) {
$fd = fopen('proxy.log', "a");
fwrite($fd, $message . "\n");
fclose($fd);
}
?>
<?
$url = $_REQUEST;
logf($url);
$curl_handle = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Owen's AJAX Proxy");
$content = curl_exec($curl_handle);
$content_type = curl_getinfo($curl_handle, CURLINFO_CONTENT_TYPE);
curl_close($curl_handle);
header("Content-Type: $content_type");
echo $content;
ob_flush();
?>
I'm using CURL to make the HTTP request. Notice that I set the User-Agent using
CURLOPT_USERAGENT
. If I set a user agent then the betavine servers will return a 403 security error.
Have fun!
Owen.
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