New subject: Login parms in query URL doesn t seem to work

22 Oct 2007

Hi All:
I have blown 8 hrs over 2 days trying to figure out what is wrong with my PHP program to
try to do a query.

I am trying to build a simple PHP program to get the contents of recent changes on a wiki
I admin.

Here is the code, with a couple of things "anonymized"  (surrounded by <<
>>):

========= begin code ===========

<?php
//login and get the correct security values to pass in on subsequent queries
$wikiURL = "<<mydomain>>/mediawiki";
$logincmd =
$wikiURL."/api.php?action=login&lgname=Sgg&lgpassword=<<mypwd>>&format=json";

$handle = fopen($logincmd,"rb");
$contents = stream_get_contents($handle);
fclose($handle);

$loginVals = json_decode($contents, true);

if($loginVals["login"]["result"] != "Success"){
	echo"Failed to login, result returned ",
$loginVals["login"]["result"];
	exit(-1);
}

//set up the security parm values and create query
$userid = $loginVals["login"]["lguserid"];
$username = $loginVals["login"]["lgusername"];
$token = $loginVals["login"]["lgtoken"];

$query =
$wikiURL."/api.php?action=query&list=recentchanges&format=xml&lgtoken=$token&lgusername=$username&lguserid=$userid";

echo"
 Query",$query,"
";

//execute the get and print the results
$handle = fopen($query,"rb");
$contents = stream_get_contents($handle);
fclose($handle);

print_r("
 Query results");
print_r($contents);
print_r("
 end query results 
");
?> 

===============end code ================

The login works fine, returns reasonable looking tokens.  The Query results, however are
empty.

When I copy the query that was produced (note the echo statement), and paste that into a
browser (that I have previously used to login to the wiki, I get some query results back. 
 When I paste that query into a browser I rarely use (ie haven't logged into the
wiki), I get empty result set. 

So, am I misusing the login parms somehow on the query url?  Are the login parms not
working?  Should I use cookie manipulation instead?

Please help

sgg

Login parms in query URL doesn't seem to work