Demystifying PHP $_REQUEST: Streamlining Data Handling for Web Developers
In PHP, $_REQUEST is a predefined superglobal variable that contains the contents of both $_GET , $_POST , and $_COOKIE arrays, merged together. This means that $_REQUEST can contain the values of form data submitted via GET or POST requests, as well as any cookie data that has been set.
Here’s an example:
<form method="post" action="process.php"> <input type="text" name="username"> <input type="password" name="password"> <input type="submit" value="Login"> </form>
In this example, we have a simple HTML form that submits username and password data via a POST request to a PHP script called process.php. When the form is submitted, the values of the username and password fields are available in the $_POST array.
In process.php , we can access the form data using $_REQUEST instead of $_POST :
$username = $_REQUEST['username']; $password = $_REQUEST['password'];
This code assigns the values of the username and password fields to the $username and $password variables using $_REQUEST .
While $_REQUEST can be convenient for simple form submissions, it is generally not recommended to rely on it heavily in production code, as it can be a security risk. This is because $_REQUEST can contain data from multiple sources, which can make it harder to validate and sanitize input data properly. It’s better to use $_GET or $_POST specifically depending on the type of request being made, and to validate and sanitize input data before using it in your code.