26

I need to write a PHP page which would accept an XML document sent over a POST request like this:

POST /mypage.php HTTP/1.1
Host: myhost.com
Content-Type: application/xml
Content-Length: ...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<data>
 ...
</data>

This is not data from some HTML form, just a plain XML document.

How can I access this XML in my PHP code?

p.campbell
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7 Answers7

39

Read from php://input. For example, you could use:

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

or

$rootNode = simplexml_load_file('php://input');

The alternative, using $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA, works, too - but it's slower and needs the PHP configuration always_populate_raw_post_data.

phihag
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  • you could also do simplexml_load_file("php://input"); – Tom Haigh Mar 19 '09 at 21:32
  • tomhaigh: Yes, I instinctively avoid that function due to remembering it uses its own subsystem. Turns out, this is not the case anymore as of php 5.1. – phihag Mar 19 '09 at 21:35
5

Try the $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA variable or the php://input stream.

Gumbo
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2

http://us.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.httprawpostdata.php

$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA should be available assuming the content-type of the request was not multipart/form-data

Bob Gettys
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2

$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA

or

php://input

Ionuț G. Stan
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1

You probably want to use the PHP input. Something like

$postText = trim(file_get_contents('php://input'));
Rob Di Marco
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0

Any of these would work:

$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA variable or the php://input stream.

However, for the

$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA variable

to work, you might need to change .ini setting in your configuration file

fidazik
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-2

If you use print_r($_POST); you will be able to see what you got. Unless i'm missing something... Edit: nvm, totaly forgot about Raw Data :/

Alekc
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    $_POST only contains form data, this won't be form data as it has no variable names associated with it. If for example you post a SOAP packet to a web service, the HTTP Post payload will simply contain XML without any variables attached. – Bob Gettys Mar 19 '09 at 21:31