Using serialized data from AJAX object with PHP - php

Question

I'm sending an entire form, about 8 fields, along with my AJAX data object, one of which is a serialized string:
var fields = $(this).serialize();
var data = {
action:'newSubmission',
nonce: Nonce,
fields: fields
};
Now within PHP I cannot understand how to get each field value from the $_POST object correctly.
$test = $_POST['field'];
Is the full string and sends back to JS a properly formatted JSON object. But how do I break up the serialized string correctly in PHP?

Answer 1

The string will be encoded, so you will have to do that with url_decode.
Here is a function that I used to build a workable object out of the string.
function urldecode_to_obj($str) {
$str = trim($str, '"');
// explode string before decoding
foreach (explode('&', $str) as $chunk) {
$param = explode("=", $chunk);
if ($param) {
// search string for array elements and look for key-name if exists
preg_match('#\[(.+?)\]$#', urldecode($param[0]), $with_key);
preg_match('#\[\]$#', urldecode($param[0]), $no_key);
$mkey = preg_split('/\[/', urldecode($param[0]));
// converts to array elements with numeric key
if ($no_key) {
$data[$mkey[0]][] = urldecode($param[1]);
}
// converts to array elements with named key
if ($with_key) {
$data[$mkey[0]][$with_key[1]] = urldecode($param[1]);
}
if (!$no_key && !$with_key) {
$data[urldecode($param[0])] = urldecode($param[1]);
}
}
}
return (object)$data;
}
$str = "serialized_string";
$obj = urldecode_to_obj($str);
Your variables with values are now in the object. If you have a var1 variable in there with a value1:
$obj -> var1 = "value1";
You can also get thins back as an array. Just omit the (object) casting and return the data in t\he function as:
return $data;
If you want to return things to your JS then you should echo them out as an array and use json_encode:
$array = array("success" => true);
echo json_encode($array);

Answer 2

Try using:
$serializedData = file_get_contents("php://input");
$unserializedData = array();
parse_str($unserializedData,$serializedData);
print_r($unserializedData);
instead of the PHP $_POST superglobal use the php://input.
PHP "php://input" vs $_POST
Then you can use theparse_str() php function to turn the serialized string into a php array.
There are also a number of other ways to manually do this if you so choose:
function unserializeForm($str) {
$returndata = array();
$strArray = explode("&", $str);
$i = 0;
foreach ($strArray as $item) {
$array = explode("=", $item);
$returndata[$array[0]] = $array[1];
}
return $returndata;
}