GoDaddy, cURL, HTTP, and 403 Errors

By  on  

I was recently coding PHP cURL functionality for a GoDaddy-hosted website and I kept running into an annoying 403 error. Essentially, GoDaddy's proxy server (which they force you to use for cURL) was giving me a "Forbidden" error and wasn't trying to hit the necessary server. Here's the code that GoDaddy tells you to use for cURL transactions:

$URL='https://www.paypal.com';
$ch = curl_init();
echo 'URL = $URL <br>n';
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPPROXYTUNNEL, TRUE);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE, CURLPROXY_HTTP);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY,'http://proxy.shr.secureserver.net:3128');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $URL);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 120);
$result = curl_exec ($ch);
echo '<hr><br>n';
echo 'Errors: ' . curl_errno($ch) . ' ' . curl_error($ch) . '<br><br>';
echo '<hr><br>n';
curl_close ($ch);
print 'result - $result';
echo '<hr><br>n';

The problem is that since I'm not using SSL in this instance, I don't need to use the following cURL option:

curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HTTPPROXYTUNNEL, true);

Remember that if you receive this error from GoDaddy's server. Hopefully I save someone a bunch of time with this.

Recent Features

  • By
    5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn&#8217;t Know Existed

    The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs.  Some are APIs we knew we've needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers.  Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a...

  • By
    Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools

    MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does.  Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up.  I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own.  In any event...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    iPhone-Style Passwords Using MooTools PassShark

    Every once in a while I come across a plugin that blows me out of the water and the most recent culprit is PassShark: a MooTools plugin that duplicates the iPhone's method of showing/hiding the last character in a password field. This gem of...

  • By
    Parallax Sound Waves Animating on Scroll

    Scrolling animations are fun. They are fun to create and fun to use. If you are tired of bootstrapping you might find playing with scrolling animations as a nice juicy refreshment in your dry front-end development career. Let's have a look how to create animating...

Discussion

  1. Yea Godaddy has some strange settings like this. Plus it seems to be hit or miss when dealing with their support. :(

  2. cURL and GoDaddy

    Searching the GoDaddy FAQ/Help pages, it appears that as of September 10, 2008. GoDaddy is not longer requiring proxy connections to connect with CURL.

    Proxy servers are not required for
    outbound shared hosting connections as
    of September 10, 2008. Although it
    will continue to function after this
    date, we recommend code utilizing
    proxy servers be updated to reflect
    this change.

    http://help.godaddy.com/article/4764

  3. I wouldn’t trust the GoDaddy FAQ.

    It’s horribly outdated.

    I am switching to a VPS from a provider that I’ve known to be reliable, from GoDaddy.

  4. My problem with SSL and POST through CURL alsted 2 days, i am not on GoDaddy but your advice gave me the answers I needed, thankyou so much for bothering to post this!

  5. Hi,

    We are trying to retrieve XML from other server using CURL. But not happening. I have tried the above code. But no result. I am using Godaddy Linux Shared Hosting plan for my website.

    Please give me your suggestions on this.

    Thanks in advance…

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!