Question

I am using PHP filter to perfom basic sanitization and validation of form data.

The principle problem I am having is that I mark my form up so that all the data is in one array for the POST input. e.g. form fields, page[name], page[slug], page[body], page[status], etc.

Using the following:

filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'page[name]', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
OR
filter_input(INPUT_POST, "page['name']", FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

I am unable to access the variable. Can someone please tell me the correct name to use to access array data using filter_input()

Answer 1

I don’t think that you can access the single value (easily, as you want), however you could just filter the page array and get the value that you want.

$page = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'page', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING, FILTER_REQUIRE_ARRAY);
if (array_key_exists('name', $page)) {
    $name = $page['name'];
}

Or, if you’re OK with losing the ability to work with the raw input then you could just use:

if (isset($_POST['page']['name'])) {
    $name = filter_var($_POST['page']['name'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
}

Both, however, are pretty ugly.