file_get_contents() returning false for Google reCAPTCHA v3

Question

I have been trying to implement Google reCAPTCHA v3 by using the following PHP source code:

<script src="https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js?render=6Ldl-98fAAAAAKRPodblUlTcVgvrfWZ_8lODjmZA"></script>
<?php
    if(isset($_POST) && isset($_POST["btnSubmit"]))
    {
        $secretKey  = '6Ldl-98fAAAAAD3ekajHHVBi2X4fZTW37bI5IGUN';
        $token      = $_POST["g-token"];
        $ip         = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

        $url = "https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/siteverify";
        $data = array('secret' => $secretKey, 'response' => $token, 'remoteip'=> $ip);

        // use key 'http' even if you send the request to https://...
        $options = array('http' => array(
            'method'  => 'POST',
            'content' => http_build_query($data)
        ));
        $context  = stream_context_create($options);
        $result = file_get_contents($url, false, $context);

        $response = json_decode($result);
        if($response->success)
        {
            echo '<center><h1>Validation Success!</h1></center>';
        }
        else
        {
            echo '<center><h1>Captcha Validation Failed..!</h1></center>';
        }
    }
?>

The problem is that every time I run this and step through the code line by line, I notice that the file_get_contents() function is always returning false and is assigning false to the '$result' variable. Why is this?

$result = file_get_contents($url, false, $context);

I would appreciate any advice that I can get.

Answer 1

From docs: 'null is returned if the json cannot be decoded or if the encoded data is deeper than the nesting limit.'

Show us $response, so var_dump($response). In recaptcha v2 i had empty string or token lately. That's why I ask for response, json decode will decode if there is proper json value.

I'd bet you get empty result and json_decode fails.