PHP curl returning strange characters

Question

I am trying to update a page with image products of a Prestashop instance.

I am getting the information using prestashop web services. The problem is when I load the page , it asks me the Token/key of the prestashop but I would want to save the login session using the Url and the key which I pass from by CURL and not entering the key each time. However the output of curl_exec is some strange characters like ��#B��R��$3br�

Here is the function to save the session:

 function saveSession($url, $key){

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $key.':');
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, 'gzip,deflate,sdch');
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return $result;
 }

I don't know if the problem is with the encoding, header or is there any other solution!?

Solution

Those strange data on response are the compressed content which your curl failed to detect.

Replace this:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, 'gzip,deflate,sdch');

With:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, '');

Empty encoding means to handle any type of encoding. It should solve your issue.