file_get_contents(“php://input”) or $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA, which one is better to get the body of JSON request?

Actually php://input allows you to read raw POST data.

It is a less memory intensive alternative to $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA and does not need any special php.ini directives.

php://input is not available with enctype="multipart/form-data".

Reference: http://php.net/manual/en/wrappers.php.php

php://input is a read-only stream that allows you to read raw data from the request body. In the case of POST requests, it is preferable to use php://input instead of $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA as it does not depend on special php.ini directives. Moreover, for those cases where $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA is not populated by default, it is a potentially less memory intensive alternative to activating always_populate_raw_post_data.

Source: http://php.net/manual/en/wrappers.php.php.

file_get_contents(php://input) - gets the raw POST data and you need to use this when you write APIs and need XML/JSON/... input that cannot be decoded to $_POST by PHP some example :

send by post JSON string

<input type="button" value= "click" onclick="fn()">
<script>
 function fn(){


    var js_obj = {plugin: 'jquery-json', version: 2.3};

    var encoded = JSON.stringify( js_obj );

var data= encoded


    $.ajax({
  type: "POST",
  url: '1.php',
  data: data,
  success: function(data){
    console.log(data);
  }

});

    }
</script>

1.php

//print_r($_POST); //empty!!! don't work ... 
var_dump( file_get_contents('php://input'));

The usual rules should apply for how you send the request. If the request is to retrieve information (e.g. a partial search 'hint' result, or a new page to be displayed, etc...) you can use GET. If the data being sent is part of a request to change something (update a database, delete a record, etc..) then use POST.

Server-side, there's no reason to use the raw input, unless you want to grab the entire post/get data block in a single go. You can retrieve the specific information you want via the _GET/_POST arrays as usual. AJAX libraries such as MooTools/jQuery will handle the hard part of doing the actual AJAX calls and encoding form data into appropriate formats for you.

For JSON data, it's much easier to POST it as "application/json" content-type. If you use GET, you have to URL-encode the JSON in a parameter and it's kind of messy. Also, there is no size limit when you do POST. GET's size if very limited (4K at most).

Your second question is easy, GET has a size limitation of 1-2 kilobytes on both the server and browser side, so any kind of larger amounts of data you'd have to send through POST.