How to POST data from a textarea form? - php

Question

Here is my current code:
<?php
$apikey='IGNORE-THIS-VARIABLE';
// All URLS to be sent are hold in an array for example
$urls=array('http://www.site1.com','http://www.site2.com/');
// build the POST query string and join the URLs array with | (single pipe)
$qstring='apikey='.$apikey.'&urls='.urlencode(implode('|',$urls));
// Do the API Request using CURL functions
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,'http://www.example.com/api.php');
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HEADER,0);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_TIMEOUT,40);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$qstring);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
?>
My PHP code works, but here's the line I'm having issues with:
$urls=array('http://www.site1.com','http://www.site2.com/');
Basically I just want to have a text-area on my website where users can enter a list of URLs (one per line) and then it Posts it using the PHP code above.
My code works when I just have the URLs built into the code like you can see above, but I just can't figure out how to make it work with a text-area... Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You can do it like below (on the same php page):-
<form method = "POST">
<textarea name="urls"></textarea><!-- add a lable that please enter new line separated urls -->
<input type = "submit">
</form>
<?php
if(isset($_POST['urls'])){
$apikey='IGNORE-THIS-VARIABLE';
// All URLS to be sent as new-line separated string and explode it to an array
$urls=explode('\n',$_POST['urls']); //Or $urls=explode('\\n',$_POST['urls']);
// if not worked then
//$urls=explode(PHP_EOL,$_POST['urls']);
// build the POST query string and join the URLs array with | (single pipe)
$qstring='apikey='.$apikey.'&urls='.urlencode(implode('|',$urls));
// Do the API Request using CURL functions
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,'http://www.example.com/api.php');
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HEADER,0);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_TIMEOUT,40);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$qstring);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
}
?>
Note:- you can separate the form and logic on two different pages. that's seay i think.
You can use text-area and then you have to then explode by \n or if not work then explode by PHP_EOL to the initial url string and rest the code is same as above

Answer 2

You can pass to the form value as in bellow box is. any tag in HTML form have name attribute, assign name for any textarea, input or select tag.
<form method="post" name="first_form">
<input type="text" name="url" value="" />
<textarea name="note"></textarea>
<input type="submit" value="Post" />
</form>
In PHP you can the pass the value using two methods, $_GET or $_POST.
assign the tag name which you give for the HTML tag ($_POST['note'] or $_POST['url']) and also you can make it like an array $_POST.
<?php
if(isset($_POST)){
// display the posted values from the HTML Form
echo $_POST['note'];
echo $_POST['url'];
}
?>
Your Code:
$apikey='IGNORE-THIS-VARIABLE';
// All URLS to be sent are hold in an array for example
$urls=array('http://www.site1.com','http://www.site2.com/');
// build the POST query string and join the URLs array with | (single pipe)
$qstring='apikey='.$apikey.'&urls='.urlencode(implode('|',$urls));
// Do the API Request using CURL functions
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,'http://www.example.com/api.php');
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HEADER,0);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_TIMEOUT,40);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$qstring);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);