Why am I unable to access the json data POST'd to my codeigniter application? - json

Question

I'm working on a RESTful application using CodeIgniter and I'm unable to access my POST'd json data in my controller.
I'm posting the json via cURL on my local machine, while the app is being developed on a remote server.
Here is the controller code in question:
class Products extends CI_Controller
{
public function __construct()
{
$this->load->model(products_model);
}
public function index($id = FALSE)
{
if($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'GET')
{
// fetch product data
$product_data = $this->products_model->get_products($id)
// set appropriate header, output json
$this->output
->set_content_type(application/json)
->set_output(json_encode($product_data));
}
elseif($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST')
{
// debugging for now, just dump the post data
var_dump($this->input->post());
}
}
}
The GET action is working well enough, and returning the appropriate data when requested from a browser, or via a cURL request. However, when attempting to POST json data via cURL I consistently get bool(FALSE) returned from the POST section of the index function. Here is the cURL request I'm making:
curl -X POST -d #product.json mydomain.com/restfulservice/products
Also, here is the contents of the product.json file:
{"id":"240",
"name":"4 x 6 Print",
"cost":"1.5900",
"minResolution":401,
"unitOfMeasure":"in",
"dimX":0,
"dimY":0,
"height":4,
"width":6}
I've made another POST via cURL, excluding the json data and passing something like this:
curl -X POST -d '&this=that' mydomain.com/restfulservice/products
Which returns
array(1) {
["this"]=>
string(4) "that"
}
What gives? Something with the json? It's valid. I've turned off the global CSRF and XSS in application/config/config.php as I understand they require use of CI's form_open() and won't work properly without it. It's my understanding that excluding parameters from $this->input->post() will return ALL the post items yet I continue to get none. I've also tried going around CI's input library and accessing the data via PHP's $_POST variable, it has made no difference.

Answer 1

Your post data is not in query string format so you should skip dealing with $_POST and go straight to the raw post data.
try
var_dump($HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA);
or even better
var_dump(file_get_contents("php://input"));

Answer 2

in codeigniter 2.X, you can override Input class and add necessary functionality.
https://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/general/core_classes.html
add file MY_Input.php to application/core
add code inside this file:
<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
class MY_Input extends CI_Input {
public function raw_post() {
return file_get_contents('php://input');
}
public function post($index = NULL, $xss_clean = FALSE) {
$content_type = $this->get_request_header('Content-type');
if (stripos($content_type, 'application/json') !== FALSE
&& ($postdata = $this->raw_post())
&& in_array($postdata[0], array('{', '['))) {
$decoded_postdata = json_decode($postdata, true);
if ((json_last_error() == JSON_ERROR_NONE))
$_POST = $decoded_postdata;
}
return parent::post($index, $xss_clean);
}
}
that's it..
use it like normal post..