Curl post form and get result

Question

I found this website http://www.fonefinder.net/findome.php , that locates phone provider by number (ex: http://www.fonefinder.net/findome.php?npa=562&nxx=866&thoublock=1666) shows VERIZON CALIFORNIA INC.-CA (GTE) . I am trying to get result using linux curl and through php curl but receive "You must input more numeric digits." like no data is sent. I tried below methods and they do not work. What is wrong and how can i get results?

curl --data "npa=562&nxx=866&thoublock=1666&usaquerytype"  \
     link --header "Content-Type:text/html"

also tried x-www-form and with this script:

<?
//extract data from the post
extract($_POST);

//set POST variables
$url = 'link';
$fields = array('npa' => urlencode(544), );

//url-ify the data for the POST
foreach($fields as $key=>$value) { 
   $fields_string .= $key.'='.$value.'&'; 
}
rtrim($fields_string, '&');

//open connection
$ch = curl_init();

//set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST, count($fields));
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $fields_string);

//execute post
$result = curl_exec($ch);
echo "$result";
//close connection
curl_close($ch);
?>

All methods result in "You must input more numeric digits."

Answer 1

Your request uses the GET method, which means the query is encoded into the URI.

See here for more info http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html#sec9

So you need to generate and append the query string to the url e.g. findome.php?npa=562&nxx=866 ...

<?php
$url = "http://www.fonefinder.net/findome.php";
$query = array('npa'=>562,'nxx'=>866,'thoublock'=>1666,'usaquerytype');
$url .= sprintf("?%s", http_build_query($query, '', '&'));
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo "$result";
?>

Answer 2

(I formatted you message a little to make it more readable.)

If you do the above, you get the same error message in a browser too, so it's not cURL's fault.

I wonder where you found the format? If you do it manually, then the query is just a normal GET:

http://www.spokeo.com/reverse-phone-lookup/search?p=1234567890&sea2=t104

where 123456790 is a 10-digit phone number. I suspect sea2 to be a session identifier, which you get from the previous page.

EDIT: It's a little different. The request is even easier:

GET /search?q=1234567890

This gives an error 302 (relocation) which your progam must process and do a GET to the first URL I passed.