Getting content from PHP: Trouble with POST and query

Question

Apologies for my longest question on SO ever. I'm trying to interface with a php frontend for a mysql database in ROOT (a CERN framework in C++ for high energy physics analysis). To start off with, I tried to get this php interface to play nice with wget and curl first because I'm more familiar with them. The following command works:

wget --post-data "hostname=localhost:3306&un=joeuser&pw=psswd&myquery=show_spazio_databases;" http://some.host.edu/log/log_query_matlab.php

The results are:

database1

database2

That's good. If I leave out the --post-data then I get the result:

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Access denied for user 'admin'@'localhost' (using password: NO) in /log/log_query_matlab.php on line 6
i'm dead! Access denied for user 'admin'@'localhost' (using password: NO) 
Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: Access denied for user 'admin'@'localhost' (using password: NO) in /log/log_query_matlab.php on line 29

Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: A link to the server could not be established in /log/log_query_matlab.php on line 29

I have access to the php script (read only), but the error itself isn't too important. What matters it that using ROOT, I use a function called as socket.SendRaw(message, message.Length()) (socket is a TSocket) and this gives me the same "error" as wget without the post data switch if my "message" is

"POST http://some.host.edu/log/log_query_matlab.php?hostname=localhost:3306&un=joeuser&pw=psswd&myquery=show_spazio_databases"

This may be in vain, but does someone knows a way I should format the "message" that includes something that is equivalent to the --post-data switch. Or, is there a standard way to format POST requests in a single line (I've seen multi-line stuff. Is that right?) Sorry I'm clueless!

PS. The mysql query is show databases but the space has been replaced with _spazio_, Italian for space. The author of the db and php interface requires it (and various replacements for symbols), but has anyone seen this before? Trying to troubleshoot that was terrible!

Answer 1

The correct "one liner" (had to be multiline) was:

POST http://some.host.edu/log/log_query_matlab.php HTTP/1.1
Host: some.host.edu
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 73

hostname=localhost:3306&un=joeuser&pw=psswd&myquery=show databases

The end of each line has \r\n. The gap after content-length has two sets of those.