Perl client side authe using certicate

[perlnewbie9292]

Hello all,

I'm having trouble getting the following code to work and at a point where I am stuck. I am trying to perform client side authentication using a certificate during a POST request. I'm only interested in sending the client cert to the server and don't really need to check the server certificate.

Here is the cUrl command that trying to replicate:
curl --cacert caCertificate.pem --cert clientCerticate.pem

https://xx.xx.xx.xx:8443

I keep getting the following error in my Perl script:
ssl handshake failure

I guess I have two questions: what should I be pointing to for CRT7 AND KEY8 variables? and is this the best way to send a POST request using client cert authentication?

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Net::SSLeay qw(post_https);

my $$hostIp = "xx.xx.xx.xx"
my $hostPort = "8443"
my $postCommand = "";
my $http_method = 'plain/text';
my $path_to_crt7 = 'pathToCert.pem'; #using clientCerticate.pem is this correct?
my $path_to_key8 = 'pathToKey.pem';  #using clientCerticateKey.pem is this correct?


my ($page, $response, %reply_headers) =
        post_https($hostIp, $hostPort, $postCommand, '',
        $http_method, $path_to_crt7, $path_to_key8
);

print $page . "\n";
print $response . "\n";