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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC Proposal] Introducing New Global Variable to
 Support Other HTTP Methods and Content Types
From: larry@garfieldtech.com (Larry Garfield)

On 12/13/2016 07:38 AM, Dejan Stošić wrote:
> *Disclaimer*
> Sorry if this has been discussed before, i tried searching, but i couldn't
> find much information.
>
> I probably have nowhere near the experience of you guys, so i apologize if
> i overlooked something obvious. I'd like to hear if this is a good or a
> terrible idea and the reasons behind it. I'm new to the world of core PHP
> development, but if this makes sense, i could try working on this myself.
>
> *Introduction*
> The world of web dev has shifted a lot toward API development in the last
> few years. Specifically - REST APIs are becoming the industry standard.
> Among other things, one of the core principles of REST is to utilize all
> HTTP methods - (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE...).
>
> *The problem*
> Currently, PHP will parse the incoming HTTP request body only for GET
> requests (and store the data in superglobal $_GET) and for POST requests
> (and store the data in $_POST).
> Additionally it will parse the data only for
> *application/x-www-form-urlencoded* or *multipart/form-data *HTTP Content
> types.
> There are other 3rd party libraries and packages that enhance this and
> enable parsing for other request methods and content types, but i feel like
> this should have native support at this point.
>
> *Goal*
> Ideally, PHP should natively parse the incoming HTTP request body for all
> request methods, not only for GET and POST. I guess that completely
> replacing the $_POST and $_GET is out of the question as it would lead to
> no backward compatibility. Maybe an additional superglobal could be
> introduced ($_DATA)?
>
>
> Thanks

This would be infeasible.  Parse it how?

The $_GET and $_POST variables are really misnamed.  $_GET is "URI query 
parameters" (which have nothing to do with the body, and can be present 
for any HTTP method) and $_POST is, as you note, "the request body 
parsed according to x-www-form-urlencoded rules".  If the content type 
is something else, then we don't know how to parse it.  We could make 
educated guesses in some cases, but then how do you know which one to 
guess?  Is it a supported guess?  That's a very deep rabbit hole.

Remember, just because a request is a POST doesn't mean it's 
x-www.-form-urlencoded, and just because it's a PUT doesn't mean it isn't.

The better solution is what's already available: Read the input stream 
directly and parse it yourself in user-space using whatever parser you 
know to be appropriate for your application.

PSR-7 has a built-in mechanism for tracking and storing the parsed 
result, but the actual parsing itself is up to you.

Besides all that, adding more global variables to the SAPI is just a 
terrible idea in general as global variables are where architecture goes 
to die.

--Larry Garfield