displaying raw HTTP headers

jimbophpbuilder

I'm a bit confused after looking at the dizzying assortment of superglobals and variable available as well as the numerous statements and functions that seem to do "sort of" what I want to do.

I want to build a very simple script that will echo back the raw HTTP request string sent to it by the browser. It's mainly for debugging purposes.

For example, I'm want to see the HTTP request sent by PayPal's IPN to my notification page, notify.php. I'll call the script from a page that simulates the request sent by PayPal. The test page POST'S to http://mysite/notify.php.

I understand how to display the POST variables in $_POST as key=> value pairs. But, I want to see the entire request string entact, just as my page gets it.

Can someone please direct me as to which functions and variables to use to do this as easily as possible? I'm sure it's very simple to do. I'm just not sure how to go about it.

Thanks

Jimbo

drew010

i dont think PHP can get this, its just something the web server receives and then serves up a page, but you can get close with this:

$req = $SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] . " " . $SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . " " . $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'];

that may display something like "POST /notify.php HTTP/1.0"
but a real http request contains much more.
a sample session could look like
POST /notify.php HTTP/1.0
Host: yoursite.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Referer: http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr
Content-Length: 43

field1=hello%20there&field2=john&field3=doe

--end request

and then all your post vars would be in the rest of the request among other possible variables such as referer, user agent, accept type....

hope that helped a little.