How to Handle JSON Requests Correctly in PHP

Understanding JSON Handling in PHP

When submitting data via an AJAX request with the Content-Type header set to application/json, it may appear that PHP's $_POST array remains empty on the server side. This occurs because PHP does not natively parse JSON data from the php://input stream.

Why This Happens

By default, PHP processes data received from client-side requests using the x-www-form-urlencoded encoding. When the Content-Type is set to application/json, the request body contains raw JSON data, which PHP doesn't interpret as typical form parameters.

Solution: Handling JSON Requests

To resolve this issue and properly handle JSON requests in PHP, you can use the following approach:

<code class="php"><?php
   var_dump(json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input')));
?></code>

Explanation

The var_dump() function is used to display the decoded JSON data. The file_get_contents('php://input') function reads the raw data from the php://input stream, which contains the JSON request body. Finally, the json_decode() function parses the JSON string into a PHP variable.

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