Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:58050
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain garfieldtech.com from 66.111.4.29 cause and error)
Message-ID: <4F4819FB.9000607@garfieldtech.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:15:07 -0600
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20120216 Thunderbird/10.0.2
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <CAGovj_PbjoB78kXvZcaSkx3qQziMXX7ezVmzYSPHQbJL7uu7VA@mail.gmail.com> <8D8E9A0839FE464FBBDF2B499DAFA596@gmail.com> <CAGovj_OA29qv0MvpFwaT6EF4h_+CYuirNY8nLBaqGurkdO3Afw@mail.gmail.com> <88ad33db205558862288b3114ef4c391.squirrel@www.l-i-e.com> <4F480C5B.30606@garfieldtech.com> <96462fbc4e243e75b11b455624ac4140.squirrel@www.l-i-e.com> <4F4811E6.4050201@garfieldtech.com> <CAMPjJfKEx7_Um8GZmMmfeQrHAB=gKTmn+5QcHHGYEMNPduYVJQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAMPjJfKEx7_Um8GZmMmfeQrHAB=gKTmn+5QcHHGYEMNPduYVJQ@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] $_PARAMETERS Super Global Object
From: larry@garfieldtech.com (Larry Garfield)

On 2/24/12 4:55 PM, Jeremiah Dodds wrote:

>> Except that per HTTP, GET and POST are completely different operations.  One
>> is idempotent and cacheable, the other is not idempotent and not cacheable.
>>   I very much care which someone is using.
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're referring to the HTTP *method*
> used. A POST can be made to a URL that includes a query-string, but
> what that means as far as interpreting the variables is undefined as
> far as I know.
>
> Because of that, I think it's a bad idea to either treat them as the
> same thing, or rely on both $_POST and $_GET parameters being present.

The underlying problem is that HTTP has a URI query string, and a body. 
  In a typical GET request there is no body.  In a typical POST the body 
is a query string in similar format to the URI's query string, plus 
possibly other stuff.  In other request methods the body may be 
something else entirely.

PHP's superglobals make the (wrong) assumption that the URI query string 
comes from a GET query (hence $_GET) and body comes from a POST query 
string ($_POST), because that matches up with the default method="" 
attribute of HTML forms.  That assumption is limiting and misleading, 
and made worse by the existence of $_REQUEST, but is the assumption that 
PHP makes.

--Larry Garfield