Retrieve JSON POST data in CodeIgniter

Question

I have been trying to retrieve JSON data from my php file.Its giving me a hard time.This is my code

Code in my VIEW:

var productDetails = {'id':ISBNNumber,'qty':finalqty,'price':finalprice,'name':bookTitle};

        var base_url = '<?php echo site_url() ?>';
        $.ajax({
            url: "<?php echo base_url() ?>index.php/user/Add_to_cart/addProductsToCart",
            type: 'POST',
            data:productDetails,
            dataType:'JSON',
        });

Trying to retrieve in my Controller:

echo $this->input->post("productDetails");

Outputs Nothing.

Here are my headers:

Remote Address:[::1]:80
Request URL:http://localhost/CI/index.php/user/Add_to_cart/addProductsToCart
Request Method:POST
Status Code:200 OK
Request Headersview source
Accept:application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01
Accept-Encoding:gzip, deflate
Accept-Language:en-US,en;q=0.8,fr;q=0.6
Connection:keep-alive
Content-Length:52
Content-Type:application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8
Cookie:ci_session=3E5SPro57IrJJkjs2feMNlmMrTqEXrTNN8UyEfleeothNnHwNxuCZDSx4a7cJZGjj7fyr2KLpj%2BPNJeGRSzSPVmcFHVEdhSk4D47ziOl4eZcTUAZlQrWa3EYIeQJVWxMpiGZS26MEfbSXNmfel9e8TcsJTreZHipvfisrJovbXEAW4Uv%2BwrJRep1KCi1MMaDCVJb9UEinRVcDtYe%2F86jhn7kOj4kraVmVzx%2FsOaO0rAxLyAUtez%2Feaa4zBwpN3Td153sAoIb3WxVHoEj2oKyH5prVHigbIhIBR6XZqjBkM6hjBuoD2OSZ2wgLbp9DEENMoqui4WYyHROBuS2DYiJajblcS0KiFga5k%2FQOODvE7p6n%2BozN5ciDliVjJ4PnJ5PD1GaPEmec5%2FbQSlOHYWZk%2F2Blzw3Nw0EtLL7wKDzzQY%3Df645c36bb3548eb8de915b73f8763d97a47783ce
Host:localhost
Origin:http://localhost
Referer:http://localhost/CI/index.php/user/view_available_books/viewAvailableBooks/5
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/40.0.2214.111 Safari/537.36
X-Requested-With:XMLHttpRequest
**Form Dataview** sourceview URL encoded
id:234
qty:1
price:0.00
name:dasdadsd2q3e!@!@@

My Response which I can See in Developer tools:

    Array
(
    [id] => 234
    [qty] => 1
    [price] => 0.00
    [name] => dasdadsd2q3e!@!@@
)

But in browser, the output is nothing. I am trying to solve it for more than 4 hours now but in vain.

print_r($_POST); // outputs nothing
echo $data = file_get_contents('php://input'); //outputs nothing
echo $id    = $this->input->post('productDetails');// outputs nothing

My View Code:

<script>
    $('#addtoCart').on('click',function(event){
        event.preventDefault();
        $(this).attr('disabled',"disabled");
        finalprice = $.trim($('#price').val());
        finalqty = $.trim($('#quantity').val());

        var productDetails = JSON.stringify({'id':ISBNNumber,'qty':finalqty,'price':finalprice,'name':bookTitle});

        var base_url = '<?php echo site_url() ?>';
        // console.log($);
        $.ajax({
            url: "<?php echo base_url() ?>index.php/user/Add_to_cart/addProductsToCart",
            type: 'POST',
            contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
            data:productDetails,
            dataType:'html',
        });


    });
</script>

Controller Code:

function addProductsToCart(){
        var_dump(json_decode(file_get_contents("php://input")));
        print_r($_POST);
        // $data = json_decode($_POST["productDetails"]);
        // var_dump($data);
        // echo $data = file_get_contents('php://input');
// print_r(json_decode($data));
        // $id    = $this->input->post('id');
        // $qty   = $this

    }

two things you did wrong 1. data:{productDetails:productDetails}, 2. $data = json_decode($_POST["productDetails"]); — kamlesh.bar, Feb 19 '15 at 09:40
can you show your code what you want to do after you get data in $data variable. second thing you need to return or echo exit something so that you get data back from controller and process that using jquery. — kamlesh.bar, Feb 19 '15 at 09:50
I am not getting ant data in the $data variable..thats the point! — Abhinav, Feb 19 '15 at 10:02
please see the above code...View and Controller code..nothing works in controller — Abhinav, Feb 19 '15 at 10:15
Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/71239/discussion-between-kamlesh-bar-and-user2401175). — kamlesh.bar, Feb 19 '15 at 10:17
The problem is that `CI` doesn't know how to process `JSON` into `$this->input->post()`. You need to do it manually. Check my answer below for the explanations. — jimasun, Aug 01 '16 at 08:03
I had same error. This is a double USD sign issue for me. My eyes tired and didn't see double USD sign. It must be $myObj but I write mistake $$myObj and throws this exception. I hope this comment helps to somebody. — kodmanyagha, Jul 01 '18 at 11:47

jimasun · Answer 1 · 2023-01-11T08:28:23.720

TLDR: Use $this->input->raw_input_stream and decode the data by manually.

I had the exact same problem. CodeIgniter doesn't know how to fetch JSON. I first thought that it is about the encoding because I was using fetch.js and not jQuery. Whatever I was trying, I was receiving nothing. $_POST was empty as well as $this->input->post(). Here is how I've solved the problem.

Send the request (shown here as object prop -- because your js lib might vary):

method: 'POST',
headers: {
  'Accept': 'application/json',
  'Content-Type': 'application/json'
},
body: JSON.stringify({
  ready: 'ready'
})

Node: I have encode the data of type object as json. jQuery does this by itself when you set the dataType: 'JSON' option.

CodeIgniter (3.1 in my case):

$stream_clean = $this->security->xss_clean($this->input->raw_input_stream);
$request = json_decode($stream_clean);
$ready = $request->ready;

Note: You need to clean the $this->input->raw_input_stream. Not using $this->input->post() means that you need to clean the stream manually (not done automatically by CodeIgniter).

As for the response:

$response = json_encode($request);
header('Content-Type: application/json');
echo $response;

Alternatively you can do:

echo $stream_clean;

Note: It is not required to set the header('Content-Type: application/json') but I think it is a good practice to do so. The request already set the 'Accept': 'application/json' header.

Instead of passing the value through `$this->security->xss_clean()` we can we can use `$this->input->input_stream(null, true)` and pass in a second argument as `true` for XSS filtering. — Deepesh Kumar, Aug 11 '19 at 09:35

JOSE ANGEL RAMIREZ HERNANDEZ · Answer 2 · 2018-02-09T14:31:29.853

12

I had the same problem but I found the solution.

This is the Json that I am sending [{"name":"JOSE ANGEL", "lastname":"Ramirez"}]

$data = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'), true);
echo json_encode($data);

This code was tested and the result is [{"name":"JOSE ANGEL","lastname":"Ramirez"}]

edited Feb 09 '18 at 14:31

answered Feb 09 '18 at 03:23

JOSE ANGEL RAMIREZ HERNANDEZ

128
1
5

score 6 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

Although OP seems satisfied, choosen answer doesn't tell us the reason and the real solution . (btw that post_array is not an array it's an object indeed ) @jimasun's answer has the right approach. I will just make things clear and add a solution beyond CI.

So the reason of problem is ;

Not CI or PHP, but your server doesn't know how to handle a request which has an application/json content-type. So you will have no $_POST data. Php has nothing to do with this. Read more at : Reading JSON POST using PHP

And the solution is ; Either don't send request as application/json or process request body to get post data.

For CI @jimasun's answer is precise way of that.

And you can also get request body using pure PHP like this.

$json_request_body = file_get_contents('php://input');

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 19 '15 at 10:37

3

General method I use for my Ajax Calls in CI :

JS :

post_array =
{
    "myvar" : "value1",
    "myvar2": "value2"
} 

$.post(baseUrl + "/AjaxController/my_function", post_array,
    function(data)
    {
        var res = jQuery.parseJSON(data);
        alert(res.property);
    }

Controller :

public function my_function()
{
    $myvar = $this->input->post('myvar');
    $myvar2 = $this->input->post('myvar2'); 

    //Stuff

    echo json_encode($myobject);
}

answered Feb 19 '15 at 10:37

AdrienXL

3,008
3
23
39

How about echoing or putting this data in a table of a view file? How would I do that @AdrienXL? What would be my javascript success: function would look like? – Eli Feb 23 '15 at 13:07
Where's $myobject come from? – logic-unit May 13 '15 at 14:29
@logic-unit it's the object you've built depending on what you have to do in the `//Stuff` part – AdrienXL May 13 '15 at 15:29
1

This is more or less what he did but this answer didn't catch the issue. In the OP's issues `JSON` needs to be fetched using `POST`. Your answer is opaque because in fact in your code `CI` does NOT processes the request as `JSON`. `jQuery` modifies the request load into another format in the process! If you need to work with `JSON` as the OS stated, check my answer for full explanation. – jimasun Aug 01 '16 at 08:06
1

I got no clue... would OP can tell us how this answer helped him/her – Erdinç Çorbacı Oct 02 '16 at 22:07

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 19 '15 at 09:42

2

You only have your own answer.

print_r($_POST);

Return :

Array
(
    [id] => 234
    [qty] => 1
    [price] => 0.00
    [name] => dasdadsd2q3e!@!@@
)

Then how will you get : echo $id = $this->input->post('productDetails');

You will get id by echo $id = $this->input->post('id');

answered Feb 19 '15 at 09:42

Rana Soyab

898
5
20

That result array is shown only in developer tools when I click the result tab, but not in that page – Abhinav Feb 19 '15 at 09:43
print_r($_POST); you must have written in php correct code ? – Rana Soyab Feb 19 '15 at 09:46
so if $_POST have value then $this->input->post() will also have the same value – Rana Soyab Feb 19 '15 at 09:46
U r not getting it, I can see the output in developer tools preview tab but cannot retrieve it in that page...I dont know why!! and thts why i have posted this ques! – Abhinav Feb 19 '15 at 10:21
@RanaSoyab the thing is , $_POST is also empty. As jimasun described CI doesnt know how to handle a request which has a application/json content-type. – Erdinç Çorbacı Oct 02 '16 at 21:42

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 16 '22 at 18:11

I'm a little bit late but I didn't find the answers here for the same problem in my application. I think it could help others like me in the future.

if none of the above solutions worked for you then be sure that you didn't add a "/" at the end of your post URL. I wasted my 4 hours for this "/" at the end of the post request URL.

CI4 makes an internal redirect for post requests if your URL ended with "/". when it redirect it lost the post data from the request.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 21 '22 at 13:13

Following solution works for me -

Ajax -

$.ajax({
        url: "AJAX_URL_HERE", 
        type: "POST",
        dataType: "json",
        contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
        data: JSON.stringify({ msg: msg, sendmsg: 1, stdId: stdId }),
        success: function (result) {
            // when call is sucessfull
        },
        error: function (err) {
        // check the err for error details
        }
      }); // ajax call closing

In Controller -

$post_data = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'), true);
$post_data['msg'];
$post_data['stdId'];

Retrieve JSON POST data in CodeIgniter

7 Answers7

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