Overwriting $_POST for PUT or DELETE requests

Question

In PHP I would like to be able to access PUT and DELETE vars globally similar to how GET and POST vars are accessed globa

Answer 1

If you create a "request" object, then regardless whether the request comes over HTTP, command line, or through an HTML5 web socket, you will have a uniform way to access request data. You can then make the request object accessible in the global scope, or pass it as an argument to the required functions or methods.

Ideally you would store data that is independent of the request in static or global variables, e.g. settings that are "static" regardless of the request, and data specific to the request in a local variable or object, that could be used by your business logic. If you had a web socket server, for example, it would be easier to handle multiple request objects in a single PHP process. Here is an example that might help:

 $headers = getallheaders();
 $query = parse_str($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
 $data = file_get_contents('php://input');

 if(strpos($headers['Content-Type'],'application/x-www-form-urlencoded') !== false)
 {
      $data = parse_str($data);
 }
 elseif(strpos($headers['Content-Type'],'application/json') !== false)
 {
      $data = json_decode($data);
 }
 elseif(strpos($headers['Content-Type'],'application/soap+xml') !== false)
 {
      $data = // parse soap
 }
 elseif(strpos($headers['Content-Type'],'application/xml') !== false)
 {
      $data = // parse xml
 }
 // else ...


 $request = new Request($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'],$data,$query);

 // example business logic

    $method = $request->get_request_method();

    $obj = new BlogPost();
    if($method == 'GET')
    {
        $obj->id($request->get_query('id'));
        $obj->load();
    }
    elseif($method == 'PUT')
    {
        $obj->id($request->get_query('id'));
        $obj->title($request->get_data('title'));
        $obj->body($request->get_data('body'));
        $obj->save();
    }
    elseif($method == 'POST')
    {
        $obj->title($request->get_data('title'));
        $obj->body($request->get_data('body'));
        $obj->save();
    }
    elseif($method == 'DELETE')
    {
        $obj->id($request->get_query('id'));
        $obj->wipe();
    }

Regardless of whether it is a PUT, POST, PATCH, or DELETE, there is only one body of data in the HTTP request, so your application does not need a complex $request object. The request object can make your controller (if you are using MVC) very simple.