PHP cURL - Illegal Characters Found in URL

Question

I'm trying to force a download using the URL from the database. The URL from the database is a external URL.

Using cURL, I'm trying to check if the URL is still alive like so:

$id = strip_tags($_GET['dl']);

// grab stuff from db
$resource = $engine->runQuery("SELECT downloadurl, section FROM resources WHERE id=:id");
$resource->execute(array(':id'=>$id));
$row = $resource->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

// define memberonly sections
$memberonly = array(18, 7, 16, 19, 12);

if(in_array($row['section'], $memberonly)) {
    if($engine->isLoggedin()) {
        $dlurl = $row['downloadurl'];
        $filename = basename($dlurl);

        // curl lookup
        $curl = curl_init($dlurl);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);
        curl_exec($curl);
        $retcode = curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
        curl_close($curl);

        if($retcode == 200) { // exists
            header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
            header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: Binary"); 
            header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=\"" . $filename . "\""); 
            readfile($dlurl);
            exit;
        } elseif($retcode == 404) {
            echo 'File does not exist.';
        } else {
            echo 'Server is busy. Please try again later.';
        }
    } else {
        // head to root
        header('Location: /');
    }
}

cURL kept returning 0, so I used var_dump(curl_error($curl)); to see what the problem is. It outputs:

string(31) "Illegal characters found in URL"

This is what the database URL looks like:

http://gs2.ww.prod.dl.playstation.net/gs2/ppkgo/prod/CUSA00663_00/12/f_d2245740342e84367b73efbbf753a26de0aecbd69e6a494f1bdf4626cb52d3cc/f/UP0001-CUSA00663_00-AC5GAMEPS4000001-A0105-V0100_1.pkg

How can I resolve this?

Answer 1

Add this Line $dlurl = urlencode($dlurl);after $filename = basename($dlurl);

like below:

$dlurl = $row['downloadurl'];

$filename = basename($dlurl);

$dlurl = urlencode($dlurl);

Also try this to remove unexpected charecter from your url:

$dlurl  = str_replace(' ', '', $dlurl ); // remove spaces
$dlurl = str_replace("\t", '', $dlurl ); // remove tabs
$dlurl = str_replace("\n", '', $dlurl ); // remove new lines
$dlurl = str_replace("\r", '', $dlurl ); // remove carriage returns

final code can be like below:

$dlurl = $row['downloadurl'];
$dlurl  = str_replace(' ', '', $dlurl ); // remove spaces
$dlurl = str_replace("\t", '', $dlurl ); // remove tabs
$dlurl = str_replace("\n", '', $dlurl ); // remove new lines
$dlurl = str_replace("\r", '', $dlurl ); // remove carriage returns
$filename = basename($dlurl);

if you do this no need urlencode.