AngularJS: HTTP POST Undefined Variables with PHP

When submitting an AngularJS form using $http.post(), variables received by the PHP script may appear as undefined, despite receiving a 200 OK response.

Causes

By default, AngularJS sets the Content-Type header to application/json for HTTP POST requests. However, if a form-encoded payload is sent instead of JSON data, PHP will not populate the $_POST array as expected.

Solutions

There are two primary solutions:

1. Use the Default JSON Header:

   • Keep the default Content-Type header of application/json.
   • In PHP, read the raw input and deserialize the JSON data using json_decode().

2. Send Form-Encoded Data:

   • Set the Content-Type header to application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
   • Manually form a query string such as [email protected]&password=secret and send it as the data payload.
   • Make sure to URL-encode the query string using encodeURIComponent().

Example Modified PHP

For the second solution:

$query_string = file_get_contents("php://input");
parse_str($query_string, $data);
$email = $data['email'];
$password = $data['password'];