PHP - $_REQUEST
$_REQUEST
$_REQUEST is a PHP super global variable which
contains submitted form data, and all cookie data.
In other words, $_REQUEST is an array
containing data from
$_GET,
$_POST, and
$_COOKIE.
You can access this data with the $_REQUEST
keyword followed by the name of the form field, or cookie, like this:
$_REQUEST['firstname']
Using $_REQUEST on $_POST Requests
POST request are usually data submitted from an HTML form.
Here is an example of how a HTML form could look like:
HTML form
<html>
<body>
<form method="post" action="demo_request.php">
Name: <input type="text" name="fname">
<input type="submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>
When a user clicks the submit button, the form data is sent to a PHP file specified in the
action attribute of the
<form> tag.
In the action file we can use the $_REQUEST variable
to collect the value of the input field.
PHP file
$name = $_REQUEST['fname'];
echo $name;
In the example below we have put the HTML form and PHP code in the same PHP file.
We have also added some extra lines for security.
Example
<html>
<body>
<form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];?>">
Name: <input type="text" name="fname">
<input type="submit">
</form>
<?php
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
$name = htmlspecialchars($_REQUEST['fname']);
if (empty($name)) {
echo "Name is empty";
} else {
echo $name;
}
}
?>
</body>
</html>
Using $_REQUEST on $_GET Requests
GET request can be form submissions as in the example above, with the
method attribute of the HTML <form>
element set to GET.
GET requests can also be data from a query string (information added after a URL address).
Here is an example of how an HTML hyperlink, with a query string could look like:
HTML link
<html>
<body>
<a href="demo_phpfile.php?subject=PHP&web=W3schools.com">Test $GET</a>
</body>
</html>
When a user clicks the link, the query string data is sent to demo_phpfile.php.
In the PHP file we can use the $_REQUEST variable
to collect the value of the query string.
Example
The PHP file demo_phpfile.php:
<html>
<body>
<?php
echo "Study " . $_REQUEST['subject'] . " at " . $_REQUEST['web'];
?>
</body>
</html>
