ajax post data is not read yii2 - php

Question

I'm trying to read $_POST array posted through AJAX in a controller action using Yii::$app->request->post(), but something strange happens.
jQuery:
`
function renderGridView() {
var formId = $('#input-field :input[value!=""]');
// extract values. Make sure to send _csrf token
$.ajax({
url: "?r=value-search%2Fsearch", //this one works
method: 'POST',
data: {
searchData: formId.serializeArray(),
},
success: function(response) { //JSON array is returned.
/*$('#resultGrid').DataTable( {
data: [
response['provider']
],
columns: [
response['columns']
]
}); */
console.log(response);
}
})
}
`
PHP Controller action:
public function actionSearch() {
$data = \Yii::$app->request->post('searchData');
$tt; $svalue;
if(count($data) === 0) {throw new UserException('data is emptry');}
echo var_dump($data);
}
And here's the issue, the code above works just fine. But when I'm trying to echo $data my custom UserException 'data is empty' is thrown, instead of PHP's 'trying to pass array as a string', which I'd normally expect. What is causing this? Why does post() behave like this? Is there a technical reason to it?

Answer 1

just change
data: {
searchData: formId.serializeArray(),
},
to
data:formId.serialize(),
you should use ActiveForm to create your form using your model and the names will be automatically assigned to inputs which include the convention ModelName[field_name] apart from this you haven't shown your form but in your action you are getting the searchData in the post() array so I assume you have the data being posted as
[
searchData=>[
field_1=>value,
field_1=>value,
field_1=>value,
field_1=>value,
]
]