Predefined Variables

PHP provides predefined variables that represent external variables, built-in environment variables, and other information about the execution environment, such as the number and values of the arguments passed to the script in the CLI environment.

Superglobals — Built-in variables that are always available in all scopes
$GLOBALS — References all variables available in global scope
$_SERVER — Server and execution environment information
$_GET — HTTP GET variables
$_POST — HTTP POST variables
$_FILES — HTTP File Upload variables
$_REQUEST — HTTP Request variables
$_SESSION — Session variables
$_ENV — Environment variables
$_COOKIE — HTTP Cookies
$php_errormsg — The previous error message
$http_response_header — HTTP response headers
$argc — The number of arguments passed to script
$argv — Array of arguments passed to script

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User Contributed Notes 16 notes

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New York PHP ¶

19 years ago

Warning: $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] can include arbitrary user input. The documentation should be updated to reflect this.

The request "http://example.com/info.php/attack%20here" will run /info.php, but in Apache $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] will equal "/info.php/attack here". This is a feature, but it means that PHP_SELF must be treated as user input.

The attack string could contain urlencoded HTML and JavaScript (cross-site scripting) or it could contain urlencoded linebreaks (HTTP response-splitting).

The use of $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] is recommended instead.

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nathan ¶

18 years ago

Also on using IPs to look up country & city, note that what you get might not be entirely accurate.  If their ISP is based in a different city or province/state, the IPs may be owned by the head office, and used across several areas.  
You also have rarer situations where they might be SSHed into another server, on the road, at work, at a friend's...  It's a nice idea, but as the example code shows, it should only be used to set defaults.

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danvasile at pentest dot ro ¶

17 years ago

If you have problems with $_SERVER['HTTPS'], especially if it returns no values at all you should check the results of phpinfo(). It might not be listed at all. 
Here is a solution to check and change, if necessary, to ssl/https that will work in all cases:

<?php
if ($_SERVER['SERVER_PORT']!=443) {
$sslport=443; //whatever your ssl port is
$url = "https://". $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . ":" . $sslport . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
header("Location: $url");
}
?>

Of course, this should be done before any html tag or php echo/print.

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Joe Marty ¶

17 years ago

I think it is very important to note that PHP will automatically replace dots ('.') AND spaces (' ') with underscores ('_') in any incoming POST or GET (or REQUEST) variables.

This page notes the dot replacement, but not the space replacement:
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.external.php

The reason is that '.' and ' ' are not valid characters to use in a variable name.  This is confusing to many people, because most people use the format $_POST['name'] to access these values.  In this case, the name is not used as a variable name but as an array index, in which those characters are valid.

However, if the register_globals directive is set, these names must be used as variable names.  As of now, PHP converts the names for these variables before inserting them into the external variable arrays, unfortunately - rather than leaving them as they are for the arrays and changing the names only for the variables set by register_globals.

If you want to use:
<input name="title for page3.php" type="text">

The value you will get in your POST array, for isntance would be:
$_POST['title_for_page3_php']

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Nicolae Namolovan ¶

16 years ago

SECURITY RISK !

Never ever trust the values that comes from $_SERVER.

HTTP_X_FORWARDED, HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR, HTTP_FORWARDED, etc.. can be spoofed !

To get the ip of user, use only $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'], otherwise the 'ip' of user can be easily changed by sending a HTTP_X_* header, so user can escape a ban or spoof a trusted ip.

Of course this is well know, but I don't see it mentioned in these notes..

If you use the ip only for tracking (not for any security features like banning or allow access to something by ip), you can also use HTTP_X_FORWARDED to get user's ip what are behind proxy.

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jameslporter at gmail dot com ¶

18 years ago

Refer to CanonicalName if you are not getting the ServerName in the $_SERVER[SERVER_NAME] variable....This was a pain to figure out for me...now it works as expected by turning canonical naming on.

http://www.apacheref.com/ref/http_core/UseCanonicalName.html

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drew dot griffiths at clare dot net ¶

19 years ago

Re: You can take advantage of 404 error to an usable redirection using REQUEST_URI ...

Whilst this is effective, a line in the .htaccess such as:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^profiles/([A-Za-z0-9-]+) showprofile.php?profile=$1 [L,NC,QSA]

will throw the requested profile in a variable $profile to the showprofile.php page.  

You can further enhance the url (e.g http://servername/profiles/Jerry/homeaddress/index.htm) and the second variable value homeaddress becomes available in $url_array[3] when used below $url_array=explode("/",$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);   

Hope this helps - Works well for me

Drew

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Aardvark ¶

18 years ago

$_GET may not handle query string parameter values which include escaped Unicode values resulting from applying the JavaScript "escape" function to a Unicode string.
To handle this the query parameter value can be obtained  using a function such as:

function getQueryParameter ($strParam) {
  $aParamList = explode('&', $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
  $i = 0;
  while ($i < count($aParamList)) {
    $aParam = split('=', $aParamList[$i]);
    if ($strParam == $aParam[0]) {
      return $aParam[1];
    } 
  }
  return "";
}

or by directly building an array or query string values and then processing the parameter string using a function such as the "unescape" function which can be found at http://www.kanolife.com/escape/2006/03/unicode-url-escapes-in-php.html (or http://www.kanolife.com/escape/ for related info).

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Gregory Boshoff ¶

19 years ago

$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] 

Does not contain XHTML 1.1 compliant ampersands i.e. &amp;

So you will need to do something like this if you are to use $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] in URL's.

//  XHTML 1.1 compliant ampersands 
$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] = 
str_replace(array('&amp;', '&'), array('&', '&amp;'), 
$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);

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mrnopersonality at yahoo dot com ¶

20 years ago

Nothing about the message-body ...

You can get cookies, session variables, headers, the request-uri , the request method, etc but not the message body. You may want it sometimes when your page is to be requested with the POST method.

Maybe they should have mentioned $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA or php://stdin

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youdontmeanmuch [at] yahoo.com ¶

20 years ago

Be carful when using $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; in your applications where you want to distribute them to other people with different server types. It isnt always supported by the webserver (IIS).

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Anonymous ¶

18 years ago

I was unable to convince my hosting company to change their installation of PHP and therefore had to find my own way to computer $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"].  I eventually settled on the following, which is a combination of earlier notes (with some typos corrected):

<?php
if ( ! isset($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] ) )
  $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = str_replace( '\\', '/', substr(
    $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'], 0, 0-strlen($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) ) );
?>

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Ben XO ¶

18 years ago

So you have an application in your web space, with a URL such as this:

http://<host>/<installation_path>/

and pages such as

http://<host>/<installation_path>/subfolder1/subfolder2/page.php

You have a file called config.php in <installation_path> which is include()d by all pages (in subfolders or not).

How to work out <installation_path> without hard-coding it into a config file? 

<?php

// this is config.php, and it is in <installation_path>
// it is included by <installation_path>/page.php
// it is included by <installation_path>/subfolder/page2.php
// etc

$_REAL_SCRIPT_DIR = realpath(dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'])); // filesystem path of this page's directory (page.php)
$_REAL_BASE_DIR = realpath(dirname(__FILE__)); // filesystem path of this file's directory (config.php)
$_MY_PATH_PART = substr( $_REAL_SCRIPT_DIR, strlen($_REAL_BASE_DIR)); // just the subfolder part between <installation_path> and the page

$INSTALLATION_PATH = $_MY_PATH_PART
    ? substr( dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']), 0, -strlen($_MY_PATH_PART) )
    : dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'])
; // we subtract the subfolder part from the end of <installation_path>, leaving us with just <installation_path> :)

?>

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Gregory Boshoff ¶

19 years ago

The Environment variable $ENV is useful for coding portable platform specific application constants. 

// Define a Windows or else Linux root directory path
$_ENV['OS'] == 'Windows_NT' ? $path = 'L:\\www\\' : $path = ' /var/www/';

define('PATH', $path);

echo PATH;

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mfyahya at gmail dot com ¶

19 years ago

If you use Apache's redirection features for custom error pages or whatever, the following Apache's REDIRECT variables are also available in $_SERVER:
$_SERVER['REDIRECT_UNIQUE_ID]' 
$_SERVER['REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URL]' 
$_SERVER['REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URI]' 
$_SERVER['REDIRECT_SITE_ROOT]' 
$_SERVER['REDIRECT_SITE_HTMLROOT]' 
$_SERVER['REDIRECT_SITE_CGIROOT]' 
$_SERVER['REDIRECT_STATUS]' 
$_SERVER['REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING]' 
$_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL]' 

I'm not sure if this is a complete list though

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dusted at dusted dot dk ¶

13 years ago

I use HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR because my webserver is behind a reverse proxy.
This can be made secure:
Configure the reverse proxy to block this field, and override it correctly.
Configure the apache server to only accept incoming connections from the reverse proxy.

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Predefined Variables

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User Contributed Notes 16 notes