$HTTP_POST/GET_VARS

Anon

What is the purpose of using $HTTP_POST_VARS and $HTTP_GET_VARS? It seems that when I reference the variables sent by a form that they show up just fine. What good does it do to use these two functions?

Anon

Normally you wouldn't. But sometimes it is handy to have all the post/get variables available to you in an array. Then you can step through the array to touch multiple vars.

For example, if you have 20 text fields in an HTML form. It may be easier for you to do something like:
while (list($key,$val) = each($HTTP_POST_VARS)) ........
{
// do whatever you need to
}

But there are other times it's better to work with each variable individually.

toma42

$HTTP_POST_VARS and GET are deprecated. In version 4.1 and on, use
$POST and $GET.

in future versions of php the default setting for track vars will be off. This means you should start coding to use the values from the arrays you expect them to show up. $POST and $GET are always global and you do NOT need to use global in a function, for instance:

function dumpget() {
print_r($_GET);
}

will show all the get variables.

This new way of interacting with external input has been put into place to avoid security problems with bad code. Read the changelog for 4.0 > 4.1 for more details.