How to get POST parameters with wrong header

Question

I am making a POST request from IE using XDomainRequest. XDomainRequest does not sent a Content-Type in his header and it is not possible to set a custom header. I think this causes PHP to not place the post variables in $_POST.

I can see the parameters are send if I use file_get_contents("php://input") but I am not sure how to parse them correctly without breaking them. Is there a way to force PHP to collect the POST parameters? Or how can I get the variables safely?

I am using this transport to get XDomainRequest in jQuery and make this call:

jQuery.post('http://domain.de/io/login', 'email=test2@stuff.de&password=xxx', function(response)
{
    if (console) console.log(response);
    alert('response: ' + objectToString(response));
});

On the PHP side I have:

print_r($_REQUEST, true);
echo file_get_contents("php://input");

Works fine with Firefox. But Firefox does not use the transport.

POST variables don't magically disappear, not even if some headers are or are not present. Please show the code how you issue the request. — CodeCaster, Nov 18 '11 at 13:48
`I think this causes PHP to not place the post variables in $_POST.` This false assertion is your weak link. Come back with facts! :) — Lightness Races in Orbit, Nov 18 '11 at 13:49
It's not easy to cut out some example code. But how is it possible that php://input contains the variables and $_REQUEST does not? The only difference I can see is the request header I get from `getallheaders()` — PiTheNumber, Nov 18 '11 at 13:56
Please see [Advanced handling of HTTP requests in PHP](https://gist.github.com/1028251) and http://php.net/manual/en/wrappers.php.php — hakre, Nov 18 '11 at 14:01
@CodeCaster: See code above. The variables did not disappear. They just not in $_POST. — PiTheNumber, Nov 18 '11 at 14:06

PiTheNumber · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-18T14:52:28.560

@hakre: Thanks a lot. Your document describes what no one here belives:

The body of the request is to be interpreted according to the Content-Type header.

It also mentions parse_str() that does exactly what I needed.

Here my code to fill $_POST if it was not set by PHP:

if (count($_POST) == 0)
{
    $request_body = file_get_contents("php://input");
    parse_str($request_body, $_POST);
}

I would love to give you reputation for this but I don't know how. Anyway you just got +50 from me, so I hope that will be ok.

score -2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 18 '11 at 14:06

-2

As I can see in the jQuery.post() manual, the data parameter has to be in the following format:

jQuery.post('http://domain.de/io/login', {email: "test2@stuff.de", password: "xxx"}, function(response)
{
    if (console) console.log(response);
    alert('response: ' + objectToString(response));
});

answered Nov 18 '11 at 14:06

CodeCaster

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From the manual: "A map or string". Works fine as string with Firefox. – PiTheNumber Nov 18 '11 at 14:10

How to get POST parameters with wrong header

2 Answers2

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