How can developers handle CSRF protection and token authentication when using cURL for logging in to external websites with PHP?

When using cURL to log in to external websites with PHP, developers can handle CSRF protection by including the CSRF token in the request headers. Additionally, token authentication can be implemented by including the authentication token in the headers as well. This ensures that the requests are authenticated and authorized properly.

<?php

// Set CSRF token and authentication token
$csrfToken = 'your_csrf_token_here';
$authToken = 'your_auth_token_here';

// Initialize cURL session
$ch = curl_init();

// Set cURL options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://externalwebsite.com/login');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'username=your_username&password=your_password');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
    'X-CSRF-Token: ' . $csrfToken,
    'Authorization: Bearer ' . $authToken
));

// Execute cURL session
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// Close cURL session
curl_close($ch);

// Handle response
echo $response;

?>