Question

I want to receive the following HTTP request in PHP:

Content-type: multipart/form-data;boundary=main_boundary  --main_boundary Content-type: text/xml <?xml version='1.0'?> <content> Some content goes here </content>  --main_boundary Content-type: multipart/mixed;boundary=sub_boundary    --sub_boundary   Content-type: application/octet-stream    File A contents    --sub_boundary   Content-type: application/octet-stream    File B contents    --sub_boundary  --main_boundary-- 

(Note: I have indented the sub-parts only to make it more readable for this post.)

I’m not very fluent in PHP and would like to get some help/pointers to figure out how to receive this kind of multipart form request in PHP code. I have once written some code where I received a standard HTML form and then I could access the form elements by using their name as index key in the $HTTP_GET_VARS array, but in this case there are no form element names, and the form data parts are not linear (i.e. sub parts = multilevel array).

Grateful for any help!

/Robert

Answer 1

$HTTP_GET_VARS, $HTTP_POST_VARS, etc. is an obsolete notation, you should be using $_GET, $_POST, etc.

Now, the file contents should be in the $_FILES global array, whereas, if there are no element names, I’m not sure about whether the rest of the content will show up in $_POST. Anyway, if always_populate_raw_post_data setting is true in php.ini, the data should be in $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA. Also, the whole request should show up when reading php://input.