Question

I have an HTML form which must be posted to a URL. I would like the form to POST one variable named DATA like so:

DATA: somevar=someval&somevar2=someotherval

I’m having trouble doing this. It seems by default, forms urlencode the data, resulting in:

DATA: somevar%3Dsomeval%26somevar2%3Dsomeotherval

Changing the form’s enc-type to “text/plain” results in:

DATA: somevar=someval
SOMEVAR2: someotherval

Is there any way I can have a form actually just send the data as above?

Answer 1

No, you can’t do what yo try to do. And you probably shouldn’t try.
The fact that you want some data inside a variable called DATA means that your POST payload (or your GET query string) will look like

DATA=somevar%3Dsomeval%26somevar2%3Dsomeotherval

If it was (as you want it to be) like

DATA=somevar=someval&somevar2=someotherval

it would mean:

DATA has a value of ‘somevar=someval’

somevar2 has a value of ‘someotherval’

This is because each variable has the form VARIABLE_NAME=VALUE, and they are separated by ‘&’.

Check this yourself in your favourite browser debugger (I use firebug and chrome built-in dev tools).
So, the question is: why are you trying to do this? Knowing that it would be easier to help you achieve your goals.

EDIT: the example was wrong