cURL support

[jglasson]

I would like to access my web based home automation controller remotely, using cURL from a php program. I have my port forwarding set up to use a non 'well known port' . But curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PORT, xxxx) does not work - the only port value that is accepted is 80. Any other port number results in a 'connect() timed out!' error.

I'm reluctant to use port 80 since I believe that it's more likely to get hacked than an obscure port number.

Is there any way around this problem - it seems to be specific to x10hosting since the php script works elsewhere.

 

[essellar]

No, port 80 is all that's available for a number of reasons. Opening other ports would be server-wide (not account-based) and a potential source of account abuse. (Believe me, people try to get up to the nastiest sort of stuff on a semi-anonymous free host, even if they expect to be shut down in a matter of hours or minutes.) You can use just about any HTTP-based API, but your remote machine needs to be able to listen on port 80 (which is often a problem with home machines, since ISPs usually forbid listeners on port 80 for consumer accounts).