Why would you merge $_GET and $_POST in PHP?

php array-merge
JasonDavis picture JasonDavis · Sep 14, 2009 · Viewed 13.4k times · Source

I just saw this code while studying the wordpress source code (PHP), You can see they mergre/turn all get and post values into 1 request array.

Now as I know it, $_GET and $_POST are already available by calling $_REQUEST WITHOUT using the array_merge() function, so any ideas why they would do this?

$_REQUEST = array_merge($_GET, $_POST);

Answer

Decent Dabbler picture Decent Dabbler · Sep 14, 2009

That is because the default $_REQUEST is a merger of $_GET, $_POST AND $_COOKIE. Also, the order in which the variables of these superglobals are merged into $_REQUEST is dependant on the ini setting variables_order and as of PHP 5.3.0 can also be influenced by request_order. So my guess is, that the developer wanted to make sure $_REQUEST consists of only $_GET and $_POST, merged in that particular order, if he didn't have access to ini settings (on a shared host for instance). You see, variables_order and request_order aren't configurable on a per script basis.

HTH

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