Where does $_POST Come From?¶

Wait, not so fast! Where did this variable come from? We already learned that if we try to reference a variable name that doesn’t exist, PHP gets really angry and tells us about it:

<?php var_dump($_POST); ?>
<?php var_dump($fakeVariable); ?>

Like when we try this, we do get a big warning.

Here’s the secret: $_POST is one of just a few variables called “superglobals”. That’s nothing more than a heroic way of saying that $_POST is always magically available and equal to any submitted form data.

The other superglobals include $_GET, $_SERVER and a few others. We’ll talk about them later, but they all have one thing in common, besides their love of capital letters. Each super-global gives you information about the HTTP request our browser sent.

Getting the Form Data¶

Eventually, we’re doing going to save this new pet somewhere, like a database. We’ll get there, but for now, let’s set each value to a variable and dump them to prove it’s working. I’ll do this right at the top of the page, because that’s a nice place to put your PHP logic:

<?php
$name = $_POST['name'];
$breed = $_POST['breed'];
$weight = $_POST['weight'];
$bio = $_POST['bio'];

var_dump($name, $breed, $weight, $bio);die;
?>

<?php require 'layout/header.php'; ?>

This time, refresh your browser. This actually re-submits our form with the same data we entered a second ago. And there it is!

I took advantage of a cool thing about the var_dump function: it accepts an unlimited number of arguments. Most functions accept 0, 1, 2 or more arguments. That’s normal. But a few brave guys accept an unlimited number. var_dump is one of those brave functions, and it’s documentation shows us that.

$_POST on GET Requests¶

Click the top nav link to go to the homepage, and then click “Post” to come back to this form. Oh no, we’re blowing up! When we clicked the link, our browser sent a simple GET request to the server. We didn’t submit a form to get here, so $_POST is an empty array. This means our keys don’t exist, and PHP is giving us a lot of ugly warnings about it!

<?php
if (array_key_exists('name', $_POST)) {
    $name = $_POST['name'];
} else {
    $name = 'A dog without a name';
}

<?php
if (isset($_POST['name'])) {
    $name = $_POST['name'];
} else {
    $name = 'A dog without a name';
}

if (isset($_POST['breed'])) {
    $breed = $_POST['breed'];
} else {
    $breed = '';
}

if (isset($_POST['weight'])) {
    $weight = $_POST['weight'];
} else {
    $weight = '';
}

if (isset($_POST['bio'])) {
    $bio = $_POST['bio'];
} else {
    $bio = '';
}

var_dump($name, $breed, $weight, $bio);die;

Detecting GET and POST Requests: $_SERVER¶

So how can we find out if our code is handling a GET request or a POST request?

If you’re thinking the answer is in one of those superglobal variables, you nailed it! This time, it’s $_SERVER. Let’s dump it out to see what it looks like:

var_dump($_SERVER);die;

Woh! It’s an associative array, and it has a ton of stuff in it, 25 things in my case. What is this stuff? Well, it’s information about the HTTP request that was just sent. See the HTTP_USER_AGENT key? That comes from a piece of information our browser included in the request.

No, you don’t need to memorize this, or really remember any of it. Occasionally you’ll need some information, like the user agent. And when you google for how to get that in PHP, this will be your answer.

See that REQUEST_METHOD key? Ah ha! That’s the HTTP method, which is GET right now.

Let’s wrap all of our form-processing logic in an if statement that checks to see if the REQUEST_METHOD key is equal to POST:

Refresh! Our browser makes a normal GET request. All that form processing stuff is skipped and we got our normal, beautiful HTML form. And when we fill out the form and submit, our browser sends a POST request. Now our code kicks into action and dumps out all that data. We’re not doing anything with our form data yet, but our workflow is looking good!