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Minaj
Minaj

Reputation: 175

PHP _POST Array

I am wondering why: without clicking the submit button on a form on my PHP page, the _POST variable is already set.

For example, I have this piece of code on the web page:

if (isset($_POST)){
     echo "XXXXXXX";
}

It turns out the XXXXXX is echoed just when the page loads the very first time -- at this point I have of course not submitted any data to the server using POST. Why would this be the case?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 538

Answers (5)

Mario V.
Mario V.

Reputation: 51

$_POST is superglobal and it's always set as an empty array. Try this, just to understand better:

if(!is_null($_POST))
{
    print_r($_POST);
}

Why is this going to help you to understand? - Because isset checking if a variable is set and is not NULL.

Upvotes: 0

Jigar
Jigar

Reputation: 3322

Check if the variable is empty or not. $_POST will always be set.

So something like the following should work:

if(!empty($_POST['textFieldName'])){
    echo "XXXXXXX";
}

Upvotes: 0

Alex Tartan
Alex Tartan

Reputation: 6836

As specified on PHP.net, it is automatically created.

This is a 'superglobal', or automatic global, variable. This simply means that it is available in all scopes throughout a script. There is no need to do global $variable; to access it within functions or methods.

To address your code, it is created, but it's empty.

To better test if the user has made a POST request, simply test for an index on $_POST, like isset($_POST['someFieldName'])

Your code should test if it's empty or not:

if(!empty($_POST)){
    echo "a";
}

or 

if(isset($_POST['someFieldName'])){
     echo "a";
}

Upvotes: 1

Josh J
Josh J

Reputation: 6893

The same is true for the $_GET superglobal. These are always set regardless of HTTP Method. You can check if a request was a POST, GET, PUT, etc by checking the REQUEST_METHOD

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST') {
    // this was an HTTP POST request
}

Upvotes: 0

Crunch Much
Crunch Much

Reputation: 1527

$_POST is a superglobal array and it is always set. If you do not pass any value to it using post method it will be empty. So set a value to this array and check whether that value is available or not like this:

if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
 //Do this...
}

Upvotes: 0

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