How to get PHP & CURL to work with NordVPN Socks5 Proxy Servers

gistfile1.txt

<?php
  header('Content-Type:text/plain'); // this script dumps the response object to the page, this just ensures it looks nice in the browser

  $conf["url"]           = "https://ipapi.co/json/";  // the URL you wish to fetch, this particular endpoint will return a JSON object detailing Geo/IP details of the proxy you are using as a proof the proxy is working
  $conf["useragent"]     = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1";

  // NordVPN socks servers use specifc domains it seems - https://support.nordvpn.com/Connectivity/Proxy/1047410732/Proxy-setup-on-uTorrent.htm
  // uncomment whichever server you wish to check.
  //  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "amsterdam.nl.socks.nordhold.net";
  //  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "atlanta.us.socks.nordhold.net";
  //  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "dallas.us.socks.nordhold.net";
  //  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "dublin.ie.socks.nordhold.net";
  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "ie.socks.nordhold.net";
  //  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "los-angeles.us.socks.nordhold.net";
  //  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "nl.socks.nordhold.net";
  //  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "se.socks.nordhold.net";
  //  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "stockholm.se.socks.nordhold.net";
  //  $conf["proxy"]["host"] = "us.socks.nordhold.net";

  // NordVPN uses 1080 for it's socks proxies
  $conf["proxy"]["port"] = 1080;

  // your normal user/pass credentials will not work, you have to use the 'service credentials' which can be obtained from your account dashboard athttps://my.nordaccount.com/dashboard/nordvpn/
  $conf["proxy"]["user"] = "YOUR_SERVICE_USERNAME_HERE";
  $conf["proxy"]["pass"] = "YOUR_SERVICE_PASSWORD_HERE";


  // Instantiate the CURL instance
  $curl = curl_init();

  // define CURL parameters
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_PROXY,          $conf["proxy"]["host"]);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_PROXYPORT,      $conf["proxy"]["port"]);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD,   $conf["proxy"]["user"].":".$conf["proxy"]["pass"]);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE,      CURLPROXY_SOCKS5_HOSTNAME);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_PROXYAUTH,      CURLAUTH_BASIC);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL,            $conf["url"]);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERAGENT,      $conf["useragent"]);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1); 
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER,         0); 
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); 

  // fetch the page content/body
  $html = curl_exec($curl);  

  // get connection data
  $response = curl_getinfo($curl);

  // add the proxy used to the response object
  $response['proxy']  = $conf["proxy"]["host"];

  // add the HTML body to the responseobject, comment out if not needed
  $response['html']   = $html;

  // close the curl instance
  curl_close($curl);

  // output the results
  print_r($response);
?>

I updated the example url that is requested to: https://ipapi.co/json/
This url returrns a JSON object with geo/ip data about the proxy server eg; country/location etc... handy to verify the proxy is working