php - How to access post variables ($_POST is empty) - php

I'm working on a system and currently try to implement a script that another (external) system can post to some data so I can store them.
I have no control over the external system - I can just trigger it to post data to my system, giving it my script's url.
Looking at firebug when the post happens, I can see the data posted, something that looks like this:
or (urldecoded)
content={"sex":"male","person":{"name":["chris"],"mbox":["mailto:name.lastename#gmail.com"]}}
&Content-Type=application/json
&auth=DDE233H76BGN
My problem is that when trying to get these parameters in my script, $_POST (and $_REQUEST) is always empty!
I've tried var_dump($_POST) or echo file_get_contents("php://input");, but I don't see any contents.
What am I missing here?
I don't know if response/request headers are needed to get something out of it, I show them here just in case
Edit:
My script now consists of a single line of code, like:
<?php
var_dump($_POST);
?>
or
<?php
echo file_get_contents("php://input");
?>
both of them give me absolutelly nothing :s

The data should be accessed using $arr= json_decode($_POST['content']); ... but you have another problem here.
A detail is missing:
... how can firebug can show you the content of a $_POST that is sent from an external system to your website ( aka: the request does not go through your browser, but probably through an CURL request originating from the external server ). Obviously, I don't get something here.
What I see is a POST request sent from your browser ( in javascript ), made by your website.
Your question miss a crucial detail, I'm just not sure what it is.
Hint:
Try to put an echo 'test'; just before your var_dump, I have the feeling that you may not be debugging the page that is really called by the Ajax POST request that we see in Firebug. A little routing problem ?

Lets look at RFC 1945 to see what "parameter" is
parameter = attribute "=" value
attribute = token
token = 1*<any CHAR except CTLs or tspecials>
CTL = <any US-ASCII control character
(octets 0 - 31) and DEL (127)>
So i suppose "Content-Type=application/json" is not a valid part of POST because "-" is not of CTLs

You should try looking at the raw POST data variable:
echo $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA;

Related

Azure Functions with PHP

I'm trying out Azure Functions using PHP.
Getting the request information is not working for me.
I've not been able to find any documentation at all with the information of how to use Azure Functions with PHP code.
According to the only couple of examples, it seems that in order to retrieve the input information you need to first get the content of the req variable (or whatever name you assign in the function configuration).
That has the path of the file containing the request information (in theory).
$input_path = getenv('req');
So far, if I check the content of it, I get something like this:
D:\local\Temp\Functions\Binding\e2b6e195-02f7-481b-a279-eef6f82bc7b4\req
If I check if the file exists it says true, but the file size is 0.
Do anyone knows what to do here? Anyone with an example? Does anyone know where the documentation is?
Thanks
Ok, unfortunately there's pretty limited documentation out there for php as you have discovered.
At present, looking at the code might be the best doc. Here is the InitializeHttpRequestEnvironmentVariables function that adds request metadata to the environment for the script languages (node, powershell, php, python).
Important environment variables are:
REQ_ORIGINAL_URL
REQ_METHOD
REQ_QUERY
REQ_QUERY_<queryname>
REQ_HEADERS_<headername>
REQ_PARAMS_<paramname>
I'm assuming you've made a GET request, in which case there is no content (req is an empty file), but you will see that these other environment variables contain request data. If you were to make a POST request with a body then req would have data.
here is a full example parsing a GET request in PHP with an Azure Function :)
https://www.lieben.nu/liebensraum/2017/08/parsing-a-get-request-in-php-with-an-azure-function/
snippet from source:
<?php
//retrieve original GET string
$getReqString = getenv('REQ_QUERY');
//remove the ? for the parse_str function
$getReqString = substr($getReqString,1,strlen($getReqString));
//convert the GET string to an array
$parsedRequest = array();
parse_str($getReqString,$parsedRequest);
//show contents of the new array
print_r($parsedRequest);
//show the value of a GET variable
echo $parsedRequest["code"];
?>

PHP Variables not passing to url correctly from API

I'm trying to use the Premium URL Shortener script from codecanyon, I have asked for support but they seem to be a little busy, so the response time is not to quick.
The issue I have is when the API sends the request to the url shortener script with the following shortened query for example purposes:
$short = "http://myurl/api?api=MYAPI&format=text&url=http://myfullwebsite.com/email/quote.php?fullname=$fullname&address=$address&emailaddress=$emailaddress";
Although the variables are being placed in the script correctly using echo function at the end of the script after the api request is sent shows they are correctly inserted like so:
http://myurl/api?api=MYAPI&format=text&url=http://myfullwebsite.com/email/quote.php?fullname=Dan Smith&address=12 Main Street, London&emailaddress=dan#smith.com
However if I click the shortened url provided to me from the script I only get the following url string appear in the browser:
http://myfullwebsite.com/email/quote.php?fullname=Dan
It seems as soon as there is a space or even if there is no second name such as Dan Smith and only Dan is the available name, it will not even apply the second ampersand or & sign.
I have tried to use urlecode() but still no joy and I've been pulling my hair out for the last 3 days!
As a novice beginner it has been somewhat difficult to try and achieve the end result and it seems unreachable so I would appreciate any kind help or advice if possible, Maybe I'm missing something so simple?
I've thought of having the url query build from an array of variables but as a novice I've tried one way and failed so not sure if I have done it wrong.
Here is my full api code where I have tried both with SESSION and GET but that is not the problem as the end result echos to the browser with the variables there.. it's only when you follow the shortened url link that you see they're missing.
<?php
session_start();
$fullname = htmlspecialchars($_GET["fullname"]);
$address = htmlspecialchars($_GET["address"]);
$postcode = htmlspecialchars($_GET["postcode"]);
$emailaddress = htmlspecialchars($_GET["emailaddress"]);
$short = "http://myurl/api?api=MYAPI&format=text&url=http://ukhomesurveys.co.uk/email/quote.php?fullname=$fullname&address=$address&emailaddress=$emailaddress";
echo $short;
// Using Plain Text Response
$api_url = $short;
$res= #file_get_contents($api_url);
if($res){
echo $res;
}
?>
Hope I covered everything and hope I have not confused anyone. Thanks.
I think the good choice here is to encode your query with base64 and then pass it to the shortener. In your http://myfullwebsite.com/email/quote.php you just decode the query and use it. The standart PHP functions are base64_encode and base64_decode.
Did you try to encode URI using rawurlencode?
$url = rawurlencode('http://myfullwebsite.com/email/quote.php?fullname=Dan Smith&address=12 Main Street, London&emailaddress=dan#smith.com');

Save data with php-script and hold post-variables on error

I have already searched an answer here and with google, but I don't found something. Because I'm having trouble ask the right question to find something.
What is the best way for this problem:
My Page: edit_data.php
I have a form (method="post" action="save.php"). On submit I store the data in a MySQL table.
In save.php:
MySQL insert (return the new id of dataset)
if success I call edit_data.php?id=<new_id>
if error I call error.php?msg=<error message>
The problem is that I lose the data on error.
This is what I want:
- go back to edit_data.php
- show the error directly there
- and I want that all fields contains their original data
I cannot take $_GET, because the data are too big.
Does anyone have an easy solution for me?
Thank you
Is there any reason you can't use $_SESSION? That way, all your data will be saved for the duration of the session, or until you delete it.
Make sure that every PHP document contains session_start(); before any headers are output, this also goes for any blank space before your <?php tag.
To put all your $_POST data in a $_SESSION['POST'] you could do something like,
<?php
session_start();
foreach($_POST as $key=>$val) {
$_SESSION['POST'][$key] = $val;
} ?>
Then you can access your previous POST variables by accessing $_SESSION['POST']['KEYNAMEHERE']
PS: $_GET and $_POST are interchangeable here
If $_GET is to big, you can edit your php.ini file.
Please note that PHP setups with the suhosin patch installed will have
a default limit of 512 characters for get parameters. Although bad
practice, most browsers (including IE) supports URLs up to around 2000
characters, while Apache has a default of 8000.
To add support for long parameters with suhosin, add
suhosin.get.max_value_length = in php.ini
http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.get.php#101469
Max size of URL parameters in _GET

Get Request to an API url

I have signed up to a synonym API.. see the details on this page
I am having trouble implementing this in my php code.
If I copy and paste the link into the web browser, I can see the results no problem.
Instead of typing the word in manually, I wish to have a variable in the link with the relevant word i.e. $variable_with_word_stored as shown below.
http://words.bighugelabs.com/api/2/xxxxxxxx/$variable_with_word_stored/php
//format could be php (I would unserialize)..or json..I could decode it?
Any ideas guys? Thanks.
It sounds like you mean you want the result from calling that webpage and store it in a variable. What you should be looking to do is sending a http get request to that page within the code.
Check out using curl with php, you can send a http request to your requested url, capture the result back and parse it through json_decode
http://php.net/manual/en/curl.examples-basic.php
try it like this, maybe that you dont need curl:
$key = "xxxxxxxx";
$word = "love";
echo file_get_contents("http://words.bighugelabs.com/api/2/$key/$word/php");

PHP $_GET and $_POST are returning empty arrays--trying to paginate SQL data

I have set up the following:
Database class ($db)
Pagination class ($paginator)
I am attempting to write a basic system to let me administrate pages. I have a page "page_manager.php" in which I include both my database class (database.php) and my pagination class (paginate.php).
In my pagination class I have a function which echoes my SQL data. I've come up with a way to echo an HTML < select > element with the necessary IDs, which allows me to successfully echo the corresponding results (10 per page), based on the value of the < select > element. So, "1" will echo the first 10 results in the database, "2" will echo from 11-20, "3" will echo from 21-30, etc., etc..
I have added an onChange event to the < select > element which will copy its value (using "this.value") to a hidden form field. I then submit this form using document.getElementById().submit();
This will then add the $_GET variable to the URL, so the URL becomes ".../?pagenumber_form=X". However, when I try to grab this value back from the URL, the $_GET['pagenumber_form'] is empty.
Some code:
<span style='font-family: tahoma; font-size: 10pt;'>Page #</span>
<select id="page_number_selection"
onchange='javascript: document.getElementById("pagenumber_form").value = this.value;
document.getElementById("pagenumber").submit();'>
<?php
for($i = 1; $i <= $this->num_pages; $i++)
echo"<option id='" . $i . "'>" . $i . "</option>";
?>
</select>
<form name="pagenumber" id="pagenumber" action="" method="get">
<input type="text" name="pagenumber_form" id="pagenumber_form" />
</form>
So, I've tried using $_POST as well, but the same thing happens. I want to use $_GET, for a couple of reasons: it's easier to see what is happening with my values and the data I'm using doesn't need to be secure.
To recap: the $_GET variable is being added to the URL when I change the < select > element, and the corresponding value gets added to the URL as: ".../?pagenumber_form=X", but when I try to use the value in PHP, for example...
$page_number = $_GET['pagenumber_form'];
... I get a NULL value. :-(
Can anybody help me out please? Thank you.
EDIT:
I've just made a discovery. If I move my print_r($_GET) to my main index page, then the superglobals are returning as expected. My site structure is like this:
index.php
- JavaScript buttons use AJAX HTTP requests to include the "responseText" as the .innerHTML of my main < div >. The "responseText" is the contents of the page itself, in this case page_manager.php, which in turn includes pagination.php.
So in other words, my site is built from PHP includes, which doesn't seem to be compatible with HTTP superglobals.
Any idea how I can get around this problem? Thank you :-).
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
I can't answer my own posts, so:
The problem is not solved, but has been worked around.
I am certainly not very knowledgeable when it comes to PHP, but I am of the impression that using AJAX requests to include a PHP file in a document, which itself includes other PHP files, is not a good idea. The problem, I believe, was being caused because PHP is executed before the document is loaded in to the browser. Therefore, dynamically including a PHP file in a document will result in the improper working of said file due to the fact that PHP must be executed by the server before the page is rendered, and not after.
As such, I have stopped using AJAX for my site and am simply using good old PHP instead. I don't know enough to carry on using the AJAX requests, so that's an end to that problem.
Thanks to those who replied.
You need to re-pass the superglobals to the AJAX calls. So where you would make a request to pagination.php you need to make it to pagination.php?pagenumber_form=<?php echo $_GET['pagenumber_form']; ?>.
the corresponding value gets added to the URL as: ".../pagenumber_form=X
You might wanna try
.../?pagenumber_form=X
Included files can access superglobals just fine (which is what makes them super). What can't be done is to access variables from one request in another. It isn't that clear what your code is doing (since the question doesn't include a proper minimal test case–a complete, concise, representative sample), but it sounds like loading a single page involves multiple requests, and only the first of these is given the form data. Each AJAX request involves a separate HTTP request, and (because HTTP is supposed to be stateless) has different request data, so any request that isn't explicitly given the data won't have access to it. After a request is handled, all data the script has access to is discarded. This is why if you need data to exist across requests, you need some form of persistence, such as sessions (which you should be careful of, in order not to break the HTTP stateless model) or databases.
Some of the difficulty may lie in a confusion over exactly what happens server-side, what happens client-side, what happens between the two and in what order it all happens. Before you go further, read up on HTTP (a web search should reveal countless documents on the topic). You can use debuggers (e.g. Firebug, XDebug+a client, Wireshark, Live HTTP Headers) to peer at what's happening as it happens.

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