What are the common pitfalls to avoid when downloading files using cURL in PHP, especially when dealing with authentication and session management?

One common pitfall to avoid when downloading files using cURL in PHP is not properly handling authentication and session management. To ensure that cURL requests include necessary authentication credentials and session cookies, you should use the CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE and CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR options to store and send cookies, and set the CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH option for authentication. 

$ch = curl_init();
$url = 'https://example.com/download/file.zip';

// Set authentication credentials
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, 'username:password');

// Enable cookie handling
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, 'cookie.txt');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, 'cookie.txt');

// Set HTTP authentication method
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

if($response === false) {
    echo 'cURL error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    file_put_contents('downloaded_file.zip', $response);
}

curl_close($ch);

Keywords

cURL PHP file download authentication session management

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