PHP curl / how to ensure cookie file is read?

I've recently discovered that php curl does not load cookies from a cookie file until after at least one request is made. For instance, assume I already have a cookie file from a previous session which contains cookies. This will always return an empty array:

$cookie_file = '/dir/cookies.txt';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookie_file);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $cookie_file);
$cookies = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_COOKIELIST);

My workaround is to do something like:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "");
curl_exec($ch);
$cookies = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_COOKIELIST);

But this feels like a hack. Is there a less hacky way to ensure that cookies are loaded into memory for an existing curl session? Alternately, is there any way to determine whether or not they've been loaded?

I want have a method called get_cookies() but currently it's difficult to know whether or not the cookie file has even been read.

posted 14 days ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

14d ago

billynoah‭

16 reputation 1 0 3 1