Demonstrating how to handle cookie-based access with Guzzle in plain PHP
This project is a plain PHP educational demo that shows how to access a protected page using Guzzle, where cookies must be handled manually due to anti-DDoS JavaScript logic.
We target this real-world article code, which displays a registration code after passing a client-side JavaScript protection step.
When you directly access the target page, the server responds with JavaScript that sets a cookie and redirects back to the same URL. This mechanism blocks simple HTTP clients like Guzzle from directly accessing the content.
Here's what the initial response looks like:
<html>
<body onload="antidos()">
<script>
function antidos() {
document.cookie = "EWAAD=1c3580445beef1431db8353bd406009c; path=/";
document.location.href = "https://www.mzv.cz/lvov/uk/x2004_02_03/x2016_05_18/x2017_11_24_1.html";
}
</script>
<noscript>EWA CDN (D)DoS protection. Please, enable JavaScript and cookies to continue.</noscript>
</body>
</html>To work around this, we simulate the browser behavior with the following steps:
- Initial Request – Make a request to
https://www.mzv.czto receive the protection cookie. - Cookie Storage – Extract and store the cookie using Guzzle's
CookieJar. - Follow-Up Request – Make a second request to the actual page, sending the stored cookie.
- HTML Parsing – Use
symfony/dom-crawlerto extract the registration code from the HTML. - Return JSON – Format and return the result as JSON.
- Guzzle – HTTP client for making requests
- symfony/dom-crawler – For parsing HTML and extracting data
- Composer – Dependency management
- Docker – For running the project in an isolated environment
Clone the repo and install dependencies:
git clone https://github.com/tegos/guzzle-cookie-playground.git
cd guzzle-cookie-playground
composer installTo run it in a Docker container:
docker compose up -dThis will start the app on http://localhost:8000.
After running the project, open your browser and navigate to:
http://localhost:8000
You will receive a JSON response like:
{
"success": true,
"code": "G6D1S8G8"
}
This project is intended for educational and demonstration purposes only. The example shows how to interact with a publicly accessible website using HTTP clients and cookies.