Reading Raw Request Body

Current Request

Property	Value
Request Method	`GET`
Content-Type	`(none)`
Content-Length	`(none)`

No request body received. This page is loaded via GET.

Use curl to send POST data - see examples below.

Test with curl

Copy and paste these commands in your terminal:

Send JSON Data

curl -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"name":"Alice","email":"alice@example.com","age":25}' \
     https://cse135.site/php-tutorial/03-headers/raw-body.php

Get JSON Response

curl -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -H "Accept: application/json" \
     -d '{"message":"Hello from curl!"}' \
     https://cse135.site/php-tutorial/03-headers/raw-body.php

The PHP Code

<?php
// Read raw request body
$rawBody = file_get_contents('php://input');

// Check Content-Type
$contentType = $_SERVER['CONTENT_TYPE'] ?? '';

if (strpos($contentType, 'application/json') !== false) {
    // Parse JSON
    $data = json_decode($rawBody, true);

    // Check for errors
    if ($data === null && json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) {
        http_response_code(400);
        echo json_encode(['error' => json_last_error_msg()]);
        exit;
    }

    // Use $data as PHP array
    echo "Hello, " . htmlspecialchars($data['name']);
}
?>

Why php://input?

$_POST only works for:

application/x-www-form-urlencoded (HTML form default)
multipart/form-data (file uploads)

For JSON, XML, or other content types, use php://input.

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