How to access a variable passed from AngularJS via http in PHP? - php

Question

I am passing an object into a PHP script like this:
$http({
method: 'POST',
url: 'updateCoins.php',
data: {flips: $scope.data.flips, error: $scope.data.pe},
})
In my PHP script I tried:
$data = file_get_contents("php://input");
and
$data = json_decode(file_get_contents("php://input"));
I then tried echoing back the received value like this:
echo $data.flips
or
echo $data[flips]
or
echo $data->flips
I keep on getting either a blank result or the word "flips" back. How do I access those variables?

Answer 1

If the data was sent JSON-encoded, then it would make sense to json_decode(). I suspect that your data is x-www-form-urlencoded (eg: name=john&age=7). In this case, PHP parses it into the $_POST array for you. If you wish to do it on your own, and handle either case, you could do something like:
// Read content-type to determine whether it's JSON data
$type = $_SERVER["CONTENT_TYPE"];
$content = file_get_contents('php://input');
if(strpos($type,'json') > -1):
$data = json_decode($content, true);
else:
parse_str($content, $data);
endif;
print_r($data);
You can always visually inspect the data with echo file_get_contents('php://input');

Answer 2

Php won't grab the posted data from $_POST if the post is formatted in json. You can serialize the post data and submit it thusly
var data = 'flips='+$scope.data.flips+'&error='+$scope.data.pe;
$http({
method: 'POST',
url: 'updateCoins.php',
headers: {'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'},
data: data
});
OR you can do like BeetleJuice recommended. In my application I just do the following so that the rest of the code is uninterrupted.
if (empty($_POST) && file_get_contents('php://input')!==""){
$_POST = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'), true);
}
at which point you can access it with $_POST['flips'] and $_POST['error']