PHP Proxy Server: How to Set Up Proxies in PHP

Learn how to set up a proxy in PHP using cURL, file_get_contents(), and Symfony. You'll also see how to use Bright Data's residential proxies in PHP for web scraping and IP rotation. This guide is also available on the Bright Data blog.

Requirements
- Setting Up a Local Proxy Server in Apache
Using Proxies in PHP
Testing Proxy Integration in PHP
Bright Data Proxy Integration in PHP

Requirenments

Verify that you have PHP 8+, Composer, and Apache installed on your machine. Otherwise, download the installers by clicking on the previous links, launch them, and follow the instructions.

Make sure the Apache service is up and running.

Create a folder for your PHP project, enter it, and initialize a new Composer application inside it:

mkdir <PHP_PROJECT_FOLDER_NAME>
cd <PHP_PROJECT_FOLDER_NAME>
composer init

Note: On Windows, we recommend using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

Setting Up a Local Proxy Server in Apache

Configure your Apache local web server to operate as a forward proxy server.

First, enable the mod_proxy, mod_proxy_http, and mod_proxy_connect modules with these commands:

sudo a2enmod proxy
sudo a2enmod proxy_http
sudo a2enmod proxy_connect

Then, create a new virtual host configuration file called proxy.conf inside /etc/apache2/sites-available/ as a copy of the default virtual host configuration file 000-default.conf:

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/
sudo cp 000-default.conf proxy.conf

Initialize proxy.conf with the proxy definition logic below:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    # set the server name to localhost
    ServerName localhost
    # set the server admini email to admin@localhost
    ServerAdmin admin@localhost

    # if the SSL module is enabled
    <IfModule mod_ssl.c>
        # disable SSL to avoid certificate errors
        SSLEngine off
    </IfModule>

    # specify the error log file location
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    # specify the access log file location and format
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

    # enable proxy logic
    ProxyRequests On
    ProxyVia On

    # define a proxy for all requests
    <Proxy *>
        Order deny,allow
        Allow from all
    </Proxy>
</VirtualHost>

sudo a2ensite proxy.conf

Lastly, reload the Apache server:

service apache2 reload

You now have a local proxy server listening on http://localhost:80.

Using Proxies in PHP

See how to integrate a proxy in PHP into the following technologies:

Proxy Integration With cURL

Use the CURLOPT_PROXY option to specify a proxy server in PHP using the cURL library, as in the curl_proxy.php snippet:

// the URL of the proxy server
$proxyUrl = 'http://localhost:80';
// the URL of the target site
$targetUrl = 'https://httpbin.org/get';

// initialize a cURL session
$ch = curl_init();

// set the target URL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $targetUrl);
// set the proxy server to be used for routing the request
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxyUrl);
// return the response as a string
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

// disable SSL certificate verification to avoid certificate errors
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);

// execute the cURL request
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// if the response is not successful
if (curl_errno($ch)) {
    echo 'cURL Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    echo $response;
}

// close the cURL session
curl_close($ch);

Proxy Integration Using `file_get_contents()`

Use the proxy option in file_get_contents() to set a proxy server, as in the file_get_contents_proxy.php snippet below:

// define the proxy server to be used for HTTP/HTTPS requests
$options = [
    'http' => [
        'proxy' => 'tcp://localhost:80',
        // force the use of the full URI when making the request
        'request_fulluri' => true,
    ],
];
// create a stream context with the defined options
$context = stream_context_create($options);

// the URL of the target site
$url = 'https://httpbin.org/get';
// perform an HTTP request with the defined context
$response = file_get_contents($url, false, $context);

// if the response was not successful
if ($response === false) {
    echo "Failed to retrieve data from $url";
} else {
    echo $response;
}

Note: The protocol of the proxy server in the proxy option needs to be tcp and not http.

Proxy Integration in Symfony

Install the BrowserKit and HTTP Client Symfony components:

composer require symfony/browser-kit symfony/http-client

Specify a proxy server through the proxy option in HttpClient when making an HTTP request using HttpBrowser, as in the symfony_proxy.php snippet:

// include the Composer autoload file
require './vendor/autoload.php';

// load the required load Symfony components
use Symfony\Component\BrowserKit\HttpBrowser;
use Symfony\Component\HttpClient\HttpClient;

// define the proxy server and port
$proxyServer = 'http://localhost';
$proxyPort = '80';

// create an HTTP client with a proxy configuration
$client = new HttpBrowser(HttpClient::create(['proxy' => sprintf('%s:%s', $proxyServer, $proxyPort)]));

// make a GET request to the target URL
$client->request('GET', 'https://httpbin.org/get');

// get the content of the response
$content = $client->getResponse()->getContent();

// output the content
echo $content;

Testing Proxy Integration in PHP

Use the command below to launch any of the three PHP proxy integration scripts:

php <PHP_SCRIPT_NAME>

Regardless of the script you execute, the result will be something like this:

{
  "args": {},
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*",
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "X-Amzn-Trace-Id": "Root=1-661ab837-40de4746307643415ec9c659"
  },
  "origin": "XX.YY.ZZ.AA",
  "url": "https://httpbin.org/get"
}

Take a look at access.log, the Apache log file that keeps track of the requests made by the proxy:

tail -n 50 /var/log/apache2/access.log

The last line indicates that the request was successfully proxied to httpbin.org and the response status code was 200:

::1 - - [13/Apr/2024:18:53:22 +0200] "CONNECT httpbin.org:443 HTTP/1.0" 200 6138 "-" "-"

Bright Data Proxy Integration in PHP

Bright Data provides premium proxies that automatically rotate the exit IP for you. Let's see how to use them for web scraping in a PHP script using cURL.

Residential Proxy Setup

Sign up for Bright Data to start a free trial. Navigate to the "Proxies & Scraping Infrastructure" dashboard and click "Get Started" on the "Residential Proxy" card.

Follow the procedure, set up a residential proxy, and retrieve the following credentials:

<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_HOST>
<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_PORT>
<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_USERNAME>
<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_PASSWORD>

Web Scraping Example Through an Authenticated Proxy

Use the Bright Data authenticated residential proxy to connect to the "Proxy server" Wikipedia page and scrape data from it with DOMDocument, as in the curl_proxy_scraping.php snippet:

// Bright Data proxy details
$proxyUrl = '<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_HOST>:<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_PORT>';
$proxyUser = '<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_USERNAME>:<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_PASSWORD>';

// target scraping page
$targetUrl = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server';

// perform a GET request to the target page
// through the Bright Data proxy
$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $targetUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxyUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD, $proxyUser);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

if (curl_errno($ch)) {
    echo 'cURL Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    // parse the HTML document returned by the server
    $dom = new DOMDocument();
    @$dom->loadHTML($response);

    // extract the text content on the page
    $content = $dom->getElementById('mw-content-text')->textContent;

    // extract the titles from the H2 headings
    $headings = [];
    $headingsNodeList = $dom->getElementsByTagName('h2');
    foreach ($headingsNodeList as $heading) {
        $headings[] = $heading->textContent;
    }

    // extract the titles from the H3 headings
    $headingsNodeList = $dom->getElementsByTagName('h3');
    foreach ($headingsNodeList as $heading) {
        $headings[] = $heading->textContent;
    }

    // print the scraped data
    echo "Content:\n";
    echo $content . "\n\n";

    echo "Headings:\n";
    foreach ($headings as $index => $heading) {
        echo ($index + 1) . ". $heading\n";
    }
}

curl_close($ch);

The output will be:

Content:
Computer server that makes and receives requests on behalf of a user
.mw-parser-output .hatnote{font-style:italic}.mw-parser-output div.hatnote{padding-left:1.6em;margin-bottom:0.5em}.mw-parser-output .hatnote i{font-style:normal}.mw-parser-output .hatnote+link+.hatnote{margin-top:-0.5em}For Wikipedia's policy on editing from open proxies, please see Wikipedia:Open proxies. For other uses, see Proxy.


Communication between two computers connected through a third computer acting as a proxy server.
// omitted for brevity...

Headings:
1. Contents
2. Types[edit]
3. Uses[edit]
// omitted for brevity...

Testing IP Rotation

Run the PHP proxy script curl_proxy_brightdata.php that targets http://lumtest.com/myip.json, a special endpoint that returns information about your IP:

<?php

$proxyUrl = '<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_HOST>:<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_PORT>';
$proxyUser = '<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_USERNAME>:<BRIGHTDATA_PROXY_PASSWORD>';

$targetUrl = 'http://lumtest.com/myip.json';

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $targetUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxyUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD, $proxyUser);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

if (curl_errno($ch)) {
    echo 'cURL Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    echo $response;
}

curl_close($ch);

Execute the script several times. Each time, you'll see different IPs from different locations.

luminati-io/proxy-scrape-php