Send POST data to PHP without using an HTML form?

Question

Is there anyway to send post data to a php script other than having a form? (Not using GET of course).

I want javascript to reload the page after X seconds and post

Answer 1

By jQuery:

$.ajax({
  url: "yourphpscript.php",
  type: "post",
  data: json/array/whatever,

  success: function(){ // trigger when request was successfull
    window.location.href = 'somewhere'
  },
  error: anyFunction // when error happened
  complete: otherFunction // when request is completed -no matter if the error or not
  // callbacks are of course not mandatory
})

or simplest:

$.post( "yourphpscript.php", data, success_callback_as_above );

more on http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax

Answer 2

How about this:

    function redirectWithPostData(strLocation, objData, strTarget)
{
    var objForm = document.createElement('FORM');
    objForm.method = 'post';
    objForm.action = strLocation;

    if (strTarget)
        objForm.target = strTarget;

    var strKey;
    for (strKey in objData)
    {
        var objInput = document.createElement('INPUT');
        objInput.type = 'hidden';
        objInput.name = strKey;
        objInput.value = objData[strKey];
        objForm.appendChild(objInput);
    }

    document.body.appendChild(objForm);
    objForm.submit();

    if (strTarget)
        document.body.removeChild(objForm);
}

use like this:

redirectWithPostData('page.aspx', {UserIDs: getMultiUserSelectedItems()},'_top');

Answer 3

Use the FormData API.

From the example there:

var formData = new FormData();
formData.append("username", "Groucho");
formData.append("accountnum", 123456);

var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("POST", "http://foo.com/submitform.php");
request.send(formData);

Answer 4

As requested above, here is how you could dynamically add a hidden form and submit it when you want to refresh the page.

Somewhere in your HTML:

<div id="hidden_form_container" style="display:none;"></div>

And some Javascript:

function postRefreshPage () {
  var theForm, newInput1, newInput2;
  // Start by creating a <form>
  theForm = document.createElement('form');
  theForm.action = 'somepage.php';
  theForm.method = 'post';
  // Next create the <input>s in the form and give them names and values
  newInput1 = document.createElement('input');
  newInput1.type = 'hidden';
  newInput1.name = 'input_1';
  newInput1.value = 'value 1';
  newInput2 = document.createElement('input');
  newInput2.type = 'hidden';
  newInput2.name = 'input_2';
  newInput2.value = 'value 2';
  // Now put everything together...
  theForm.appendChild(newInput1);
  theForm.appendChild(newInput2);
  // ...and it to the DOM...
  document.getElementById('hidden_form_container').appendChild(theForm);
  // ...and submit it
  theForm.submit();
}

This is equivalent to submitting this HTML form:

<form action="somepage.php" method="post">
  <input type="hidden" name="input_1" value="value 1" />
  <input type="hidden" name="input_2" value="value 2" />
</form>

Answer 5

Form your own header, as such:

POST /submit.php HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0
Content-Length: 27
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

userId=admin&password=letmein

Answer 6

You can send an xhr request with the data you want to post before reloading the page.

And reload the page only if the xhr request is finished.

So basically you would want to do a synchronous request.