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Get And Post In PHP

In this article, we will discuss "$_GET" and "$_POST" in PHP.

Software Requirement

Before you start reading this tutorial, you should make sure that: -

XAMPP is installed on your machine
Any text editor like Notepad

Technical Knowledge

To understand this tutorial, you should know: -

Basics about PHP
Client-server model
What is the HTTP protocol?

What Is The Difference Between Get And Post?

Before we understand the difference between get and post, let us first discuss the request-response protocol of the client-server model. If you are browsing a website through web browser hosting on some machine then your web browser is a client and the machine where the website is hosted is a server.

The client application sends a request to the server and in return server sends the response to the client.

To understand this let us consider an example of a website that contains a registration form. A user enters the details and clicks on submit button. When the button is clicked it means that the client is sending data to the server for inserting data into the database.

In other words, this is the request from the client to the server. The server receives the request and then it does an action on data i.e., insert it into the database. Once the transaction is done, the server sends the response to the client (i.e., a web browser) whether the transaction is successful or not.

There are 2 methods by which the client and server can communicate with each other: -

Get
Post

Get

In the Get method client requests information from the server by sending parameters. Those parameters are appended with URI separated by the question mark (?).

Consider the URL http://localhost/test.php?mode=’admin’. In this URL ‘mode’ parameter is appended in the URL separated by the question mark (?).

In PHP you can get the value of the variable using the "$_Get" method. Consider the code below: -

<html><body>
	<?php
echo ($_GET["mode"]);

?></body></html>

When you browse the following URL - http://localhost/test.php?mode=’admin’ you could see the string ‘admin’ printed on the screen.

You can pass multiple parameters in the URL and parameters are separated by ampersand (&) like http://localhost/test.php?mode=’admin’&mode1=admin1

Post

Unlike Get (which appends parameters in the URL), the post sends the parameter in the body of the HTTP request. The parameters are not visible to users and therefore can be used to send sensitive information.

Consider the code below: -

<html><head><title></title></head><body>
	<?php
if (!empty($_POST["name1"]))
{
    echo ($_POST["name1"]);
}
?><form method="post">

  Name:<input type="text" name = "name1"><br><input type="Submit" value="Submit"></form></body></html>

In the code above we can get the value of the ‘name1’ textbox by using $_POST. Once you run the program you will get the following output.

Picture showing the output of Get and Post in PHP

Click to Enlarge

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Wednesday, November 12, 2014

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