PHP POST request debugging - php

Question

Context
I have the following POST pipeline:
index.php -> submit.php ->list/item/new/index.php
index.php has a normal form with an action="submit.php" property.
submit.php decides where to send the following post request by some logic based on the POST variable content.
The problem is that I haven't found a successful way to debug this pipeline. Somewhere, something is failing and I would appreciate a fresh pair of eyes.
What I have tried
I have tried running list/item/new/index.php with dummy parameters through a regular GET request. DB updates successfully.
I have tried running submit.php (below) with dummy parameters through a regular GET request. The value of $result is not FALSE, indicating the file_get_contents request was successful, but it's value is the literal content of list/new/index.php instead of the generated content, which I expect to be the result of
echo $db->new($hash,$content) && $db->update_content_key($hash);
Here is submit.php
$url = 'list/new/index.php';
if($test){
$content = $_GET["i"];
$hash = $_GET["h"];
}else{
$content = $_POST["item"]["content"];
$hash = $_POST["list"]["hash"];
}
$data = array(
'item'=>array('content' => $content),
'list'=>array('hash' => $hash)
);
$post_content = http_build_query($data);
$options = array(
'http' => array(
'header' => "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n".
"Content-Length: " . strlen($post_content) . "\r\n",
'method' => 'POST',
'content' => $post_content
)
);
$context = stream_context_create($options);
$result = file_get_contents($url, false, $context);
if ($result === FALSE) {
echo "error";
//commenting out for testing. should go back to index.php when it's done
//header('Location: '.$root_folder_path.'list/?h='.$hash.'&f='.$result);
}
else{
var_dump($result);
//commenting out for testing. should go back to index.php when it's done
//header('Location: '.$root_folder_path.'list/?h='.$hash.'&f='.str_replace($root_folder_path,"\n",""));
}
And here is list/item/new/index.php
$db = new sql($root_folder_path."connection_details.php");
if($test){
$content = $_GET["i"];
$hash = $_GET["h"];
}else{
$content = $_POST["item"]["content"];
$hash = $_POST["list"]["hash"];
}
// insert into DB, use preformatted queries to prevent sqlinjection
echo $db->new($hash,$content) && $db->update_content_key($hash);
The worst thing about this is that I don't know enough of PHP to effectively debug this (I actually had it working at some point today but I did not commit right then...).
All comments and suggestions are welcome. I appreciate your time.

Answer 1

Got it.
I'm not sure what to call the error I was making (or what is actually going on behind the scenes) but it was the following:
on the POST request I was using
$url='list/item/new/index.php'
I used the whole url scheme:
$url = 'https://example.com/list/item/new/index.php';`