Question

PHP will automatically convert

<input type="text" name="foo[0]" value="x" />
<input type="text" name="foo[1]" value="y" />

into

$_POST['foo'] = array(
    0 => 'x', 
    1 => 'y'
);

Which is what you want most of the time. However, in this case I would like this not to happen. Is there anyway to tell PHP to not do this?

I realize I could parse php://input myself, but I’d rather not do that if I can avoid it.

I also don’t have the option of renaming the input names.

Answer 1

By using the brackets [] you explicitly tell PHP to create an array, just don’t use the brackets:

<input type="text" name="foo_0" value="x" />
<input type="text" name="foo_1" value="y" />

The fields will be available in the $_POST array as $_POST['foo_0'] and $_POST['foo_1'].

If you don’t have influence on the markup (which is weird, since you could always change them client side) you need to flatten the array.

$post = array();

foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) {
    if (!is_array($value)) {
        $post[$key] = $value;
    } else {
        foreach ($value as $foo => $item) {
            $post[$foo] = $item;
        }
    }
}

Or read some great input on array flattening.