header sent by curl does not contain POST data function post_with_curl($target,$ref, $name ,$viewStateValue ) { $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $target) ; // Target site curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, str_replace('\','/', getcwd().'/'."cook.txt" )); //CHANGE THIS curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, $ref); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, CURL_TIMEOUT); // Timeout curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, WEBBOT_NAME); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1); $postfields = urlencode('__EVENTTARGET=&__EVENTARGUMENT=&__VIEWSTATE=.'. $viewStateValue. '&__VIEWSTATEENCRYPTED=&ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$NameSearch1$CompanyNameTextBox1='.$name.'&ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$SearchButton=Search Now' ) ; curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postfields ); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT, true); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE); // Follow redirects curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, 4); // Limit redirections to four curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE); // Return in string $curled_page = curl_exec($ch); var_dump(curl_getinfo($ch , CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT)) ; curl_close($ch); return $curled_page ; } string 'POST /V2/COUNTY/Default.aspx HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:5.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/5.0 Host: 198.173.15.31 Accept: */* Referer: http://198.173.15.31/V2/COUNTY/ Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=pqfpur45akgy3l45ujq3fail Content-Length: 1603 Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Expect: 100-continue ' (length=339)