Question

Which of these code will be faster?

$temp = $_REQUEST['s'];

or

if (isset($_GET['s'])) {
  $temp = $_GET['s'];
}
else {
  $temp = $_POST['s'];
}

Answer 1

$_REQUEST, by default, contains the contents of $_GET, $_POST and $_COOKIE.

But it’s only a default, which depends on variables_order ; and not sure you want to work with cookies.

If I had to choose, I would probably not use $_REQUEST, and I would choose $_GET or $_POST — depending on what my application should do (i.e. one or the other, but not both) : generally speaking :

• You should use $_GET when someone is requesting data from your application.
• And you should use $_POST when someone is pushing (inserting or updating ; or deleting) data to your application.

Either way, there will not be much of a difference about performances : the difference will be negligible, compared to what the rest of your script will do.