How does one handle JSON strings from the browser

[seth]

Hi:

I'm trying to read JSON strings sent from the browser. Here is the
scenario:

1. Using YUI tookit
2. sending JSON string from YUI toolkit - using the provided
asyncRequest method.

**I would like to read the JSON string sent from the client on the
server side.

Here is the Javascript which show: [this is a code snippet only]
1. creating an object
2. encoding to JSON string
3. making the ajax request.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12 function makeRequest() {
13 var jsonObj;
14 var transaction;
15 var jstr;
16
17 jsonObj = {
18 action : "ack",
19 var1 : "fly"
20 };
21
22 jstr = jsonObj.toJSONString();
23 transaction =
YAHOO.util.Connect.asyncRequest('POST', "testPost.php",
responseHandler, jstr);
24 };
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* line 17 makes the object
* line 22 converts to a json string
* line 23 issues the ajax request


As a comparison, this is how I deal with the request in Perl:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 #!/usr/bin/perl
2
3 use strict;
4 use JSON;
5
6
7 my $jsonObj = new JSON;
8 my $buffer;
9 my $param;
10 my $jsonStr = {};
11
12 print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
13
14 read (STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
15
16 if (defined $buffer && $buffer ne "") {
17 $param = $jsonObj->jsonToObj($buffer);
18 }
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* line 14 does a read from STDIN
* line 17 converts the JSON string to a hash in Perl
1. how do I do something similar in PHP?
2. I found that can get the CONTENT_LENGTH from $_SERVER
3. I found that $_POST doesn't give me anything valid - as expected.
4. Doing a "$myInput = fopen('php://stdin', 'r')" doesn't help
either

Can someone please point me in the right direction to recover the
passed in JSON string from the client?

thanks in advance.
-S

[seth]

On Aug 26, 11:18 am, seth <[e-mail]:

Hi:

I'm trying to read JSON strings sent from the browser. Here is the
scenario:

1. Using YUI tookit
2. sending JSON string from YUI toolkit - using the provided
asyncRequest method.

**I would like to read the JSON string sent from the client on the
server side.

Here is the Javascript which show: [this is a code snippet only]
1. creating an object
2. encoding to JSON string
3. making the ajax request.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12 function makeRequest() {
13 var jsonObj;
14 var transaction;
15 var jstr;
16
17 jsonObj = {
18 action : "ack",
19 var1 : "fly"
20 };
21
22 jstr = jsonObj.toJSONString();
23 transaction =
YAHOO.util.Connect.asyncRequest('POST', "testPost.php",
responseHandler, jstr);
24 };
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* line 17 makes the object
* line 22 converts to a json string
* line 23 issues the ajax request

As a comparison, this is how I deal with the request in Perl:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 #!/usr/bin/perl
2
3 use strict;
4 use JSON;
5
6
7 my $jsonObj = new JSON;
8 my $buffer;
9 my $param;
10 my $jsonStr = {};
11
12 print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
13
14 read (STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
15
16 if (defined $buffer && $buffer ne "") {
17 $param = $jsonObj->jsonToObj($buffer);
18 }
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* line 14 does a read from STDIN
* line 17 converts the JSON string to a hash in Perl

1. how do I do something similar in PHP?
2. I found that can get the CONTENT_LENGTH from $_SERVER
3. I found that $_POST doesn't give me anything valid - as expected.
4. Doing a "$myInput = fopen('php://stdin', 'r')" doesn't help
either

Can someone please point me in the right direction to recover the
passed in JSON string from the client?

thanks in advance.
-S

I found what I needed. Maybe it will help others?

Idea was to find a way to handle RAW data in PHP.

There are 2 ways:

1. enable $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA
2. use PHP input/output streams - 'php://input'

It's cited here:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/wrappers.php.php

Here is my sample code which works great!

1 <?php
2
3 header('Content-type: text/html');
4 $data = file_get_contents('php://input', 'r');
5 print ($data);
6 ?>
7

Here is the output:
===============================

Send Ajax Request
Got Data! ...
Transaction id: 12
HTTP status: 200
Status code message: OK
# HTTP headers:

Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 21:11:08 GMT Server: Apache X-Powered-By:
PHP/5.2.1 Content-Length: 30 Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=99
Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
PHP response: {"action":"ack","var1":"fly"} <<<<=============
[recovered JSON string]
Argument object: undefined