AWS Apache PHP works from outside but fails when tried to invoke using IP within

Question

I have an AWS setup with Apache/PHP server on Port 80 and a REST Tomcat server on 8080.

If I try to access REST Services using IP Address A.B.C.D:8080/restapp from outside it works.

However if I try invoking from PHP code on the same box, it throws an internal error. Need your expert help in debugging this:

Checklist:

Security Profile: 8080 and 80 opened for 0.0.0.0/0

URL to be invoked: http://ec2-A-B-C-D.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/myapp/ba-simple-proxy1.php?url=http://ec2-A-B-C-D.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com:8080/restapp/rest/user

ERROR RESPONSE: "NetworkError: 500 Internal Server Error - http://ec2-A-B-C-D.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/myapp/ba-simple-proxy1.php?url=http://ec2-A-B-C-D.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com:8080/restapp/rest/user"

Code Snippet from PHP - ba-simple-proxy1.php:

//print $url;

if ( !$url ) {

  // Passed url not specified.
  $contents = 'ERROR: url not specified';
  $status = array( 'http_code' => 'ERROR' );

} else if ( !preg_match( $valid_url_regex, $url ) ) {

  // Passed url doesn't match $valid_url_regex.
  $contents = 'ERROR: invalid url';
  $status = array( 'http_code' => 'ERROR' );

} else {

  $ch = curl_init( $url );
  if ( strtolower($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']) == 'post' ) {
    curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POST, true );
    curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $_POST );
  }
  if ( $_GET['send_cookies'] ) {
    $cookie = array();
    foreach ( $_COOKIE as $key => $value ) {
$cookie = array();
    foreach ( $_COOKIE as $key => $value ) {
      $cookie[] = $key . '=' . $value;
    }
    if ( $_GET['send_session'] ) {
      $cookie[] = SID;
    }
    $cookie = implode( '; ', $cookie );

    curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_COOKIE, $cookie );
  }
  curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true );
  curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true );
  curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true );

  curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $_GET['user_agent'] ? $_GET['user_agent'] : $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] );
  list( $header, $contents ) = preg_split( '/([\r\n][\r\n])\\1/', curl_exec( $ch ), 2 );
  //print $ch;

  $status = curl_getinfo( $ch );
  curl_close( $ch );
}

Answer 1

Turns out the php_curl lib was not part of PHP5 installation. I installed it and everything works fine now.