Correctly handle errors with valid SSL certificates in cURL/PHP. Use this if you have problems connecting to https websites using PHP cURL extension. If the certificate is not signed by a CA listed in cURL's cacert.pem, you can use this technique to verify the certificate: http://unitstep.net/blog/2009/05/05/using-curl-in-php-to-access-https-ssl…

gistfile1.php

<?php

// [...]

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, TRUE); // for security this should always be set to true.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 2);    // for security this should always be set to 2.

// Update cacert.pem (valid CA certificates list) from the cURL website once a month
$curl_cainfo = sys_get_temp_dir() . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'cacert.pem';
$last_month = time()-30*24*60*60;
if (!file_exists($curl_cainfo) || filemtime($curl_cainfo) < $last_month) {
  file_put_contents($curl_cainfo, file_get_contents('http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem'));
}
if (file_exists($curl_cainfo)) {
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CAINFO, $curl_cainfo);
}

// [...]

?>