Reading non key/value POST data from PHP

Question

I have a system that POSTs data to an URL without sending key/value pairs but instead using an XML payload. I need to read that XML data using PHP under Apache, but PHP's $_POST array is for key/value pairs and thus is blank as no keys are provided.

I tried reading from php://input and php://stdin, but that's also blank.

How can I read the raw POST data using PHP? I cannot control the input as it is being generated by a third-party application. Imagine this being a RESTful URL that accepts XML payload.

@RakeshSharma it is being sent by a third-party application. Imagine POSTing with CURL:$data = 'foo'; curl_setopt_array($ch, array(CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $data, CURLOPT_POST => TRUE)); — Rytis, Sep 18 '14 at 07:40
Can you confirm that the data that the third party is supposed to send is actually being sent (i.e. are you sure you're actually receiving the data at all)? — Trick, Sep 18 '14 at 08:12
I changed Apache config as I need to handle multipart/form-data as is for other scripts. — Rytis, Sep 18 '14 at 08:42

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

According to the PHP manual, php://input is not available with enctype="multipart/form-data".. If this is what's being POSTed to you, PHP will not allow you to access the raw data. One workaround to this issue:
(source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1361673/get-raw-post-data)

Add this to your apache.conf:

<Location "/backend/XXX.php">
        SetEnvIf Content-Type ^(multipart/form-data)(.*) MULTIPART_CTYPE=$1$2
        RequestHeader set Content-Type application/x-httpd-php env=MULTIPART_CTYPE
        RequestHeader set X-Real-Content-Type %{MULTIPART_CTYPE}e env=MULTIPART_CTYPE
</Location>

As of PHP 5.4, there is also the "enable-post-data-reading" ini setting (http://php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.enable-post-data-reading).

From the PHP manual: "Disabling this option causes $_POST and $_FILES not to be populated. The only way to read postdata will then be through the php://input stream wrapper. This can be useful to proxy requests or to process the POST data in a memory efficient fashion."

Try disabling this setting and then reading from php://input.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 20 '16 at 17:15

0

You can check and see if there is any information stored in your post by doing:

print_r( $_POST );

What you would like to do might be sending the XML data in a key named xml or something like that resulting in $_POST['xml'] = 'your xml code'

EDIT:

It would also be nice if you could post the code you use to create the $_POST.

edited Nov 20 '16 at 17:15

SharpC

6,974
4
45
40

answered Sep 18 '14 at 07:30

Ole Haugset

3,709
3
23
44

POST is sent by a third-party application that I cannot control, so I cannot send a key/value pair. Imagine this as being a RESTful URL with an XML payload. – Rytis Sep 18 '14 at 07:33
Are you getting any result from print_r( $_POST ) or print_r( $_GET ) containing your data? – Ole Haugset Sep 18 '14 at 07:43
They are blank arrays. – Rytis Sep 18 '14 at 07:51

Reading non key/value POST data from PHP

2 Answers2