$_POST variable empty after AJAX Request

Question

I've seen a lot of posts on this issue, but many of them are at least 3 years old, and nothing seemed to resolve my issue. I'm hoping someone can help. I created an array of strings that are paths to files on a server. I want to pass that array to a PHP file to unlink the specified files. The problem is when I pass the array to the PHP file using jQuery's ajax() function, the $_POST variable is empty so I can't do anything with the data. The URL is good and the array has a length of 1 in this example. Here is my code:

jQuery

$(".remove").click(function() { var images = document.getElementsByTagName('img'); var images2remove = []; $(images).each(function() { if($(this).hasClass('highlight')) { var path = $(this).attr('src'); images2remove.push(path); } }) $.ajax({ url: 'removeFiles.php', type: 'post', data: {images : images2remove}, contentType: false, processData: false, success: function(response) { if(response != 0) { console.log(response); } else { alert('file not removed'); } } }) });

And my php

$images = $_POST['images']; var_dump($images); // returns array(0){}

I've also tried:

$post = file_get_contents('php://input'); var_dump($post) // returns string(15) [object, Object]

I'm not quite sure what to do with that. Based on examples I have seen I feel I should be able to access the contents of this array using the $_POST variable. What am I missing here? Thanks as always!

Where are you seeing that $_POST is empty? Is it from console.log(response) or somewhere else? Also, what is your .remove HTML element? You're not preventing the default event action so if it's a link or submit button, your page might be navigating away — Phil
– Phil, Commented May 17, 2020 at 22:39
Why do you have contentType: false and processData: false? Setting those to false will be the cause of your problem — Phil
– Phil, Commented May 17, 2020 at 22:44
contentType: false was the problem. Simple fix. Thank you. I was copying code off of an article I saw and never really thought about it. — Skins fan
– Skins fan, Commented May 18, 2020 at 15:10

Roldan · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-17 22:42:31Z

Check out this fiddle example:

https://jsfiddle.net/f7kbL4m2/8/

I had to change the data parameter to json to comply with the async call.

In your PHP

$data = json_decode(stripslashes($_POST['json'])); // here i would like use foreach: foreach($data as $d){ echo $d; }

Also, check out this answer

Remove the content type and process data from your AJAX Call.

$.ajax({ url: 'removeFiles.php', type: 'post', data: {images : images2remove}, success: function(response) { if(response != 0) { console.log(response); } else { alert('file not removed'); } } })

Content type: Indicate the type of data you are sending

Process data: Indicate that jquery should serialize the data to send it to the server.

Check out : https://api.jquery.com/jquery.ajax/

I wouldn't recommend getting OP to move to JSON. All you had to say was "remove the contentType and processData options"
json_decode(stripslashes($_POST['json'])) is completely unnecessary in this answer
I believe that sending raw post data over it's not a good practice. There have been a lot of different position on this.Here is other discussion. For the sake of the answer i would say you are right, there is extra code on it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with posting application/x-www-form-urlencoded data
Yes removing the content type and process data solved my problem.

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