CodeIgniter POST variables

Question

Anyone know why:

class Booking extends Controller {
 function booking()
 {
 parent::Controller();
 }
 function send_instant_to_paypal()
 {
 print_r($_POST);
 echo '<hr />';
 print_r($this->input->post());
 echo '<hr />';
 $id_booking = $this->input->post('id_booking');
 $title = $this->input->post('basket_description');
 $cost = ($this->input->post('fee_per_min') * $this->input->post('amount'));
 echo $id_booking;
 echo $title
 echo $cost
 }
}

Will echo post variables in CI for $_POST but NOT for $this->input->post();?

I've got $this->input->post() in use and working on a search page elsewhere in the site... but on this page, it's not working.. here's my form...

<form id="add_funds" action="' . site_url('booking/send_instant_to_paypal') . '" method="post">
<input type="text" name="amount" id="amount" value="" />
<input type="hidden" name="id_booking" id="id_booking" value="0" />
<input type="hidden" name="basket_description" id="basket_description" value="Adding Credit" />
<input type="hidden" name="fee_per_min" id="fee_per_min" value="' . $fee_per_min . '" />
<input type="submit" value="Add to basket" />
</form>

It's mental ;-p Anyone spot anything obviously stupid I'm missing?

• Jakub: CI2.1 or CI1.X? Looks like CI1, which means your call to $this->input-post() is wrong

Answer 1

You most likely have XSS or CSRF enabled and it will prohibit (guessing here) Paypal to get those details back to you.

This is typical of CodeIgniter, and there are some work arounds like excluding CSRF for certain controllers (via config or hook).

If you give some more details on where the POST is coming from I can answer a bit clearly.

edit

could be that you are calling $this->input->post() incorrectly? I know that CI2.1 added support for $this->input->post() to return the full array, but until this point you had to explicitly define the post variable you wanted ala:

$user = $this->input->post('username');

• Beertastic: To be honest, paypal is not in the loop yet (it will be). All I'm doing is loading the form in a view and posting to the controller/method supplied above. Nothing else is going on.. I've broken it down to the basics too.. :-(
• Jakub: I suspect you are confusing the CI2.1 documentation (userguide) with a CI1.X release, so $this->input->post() will not return an array for you. Look here in latest change log: codeigniter.com/user_guide/changelog.html
• Beertastic: Indeed, that was a rookie mistake.. However, I was adding explicit post variables, to which I've added to my first post. These variables are NOT echoing... I can't fathom why...

Answer 2

I resolved the issue with excluding CSRF protection for that particular method

you can add this code in application/config/config.php

if(stripos($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"],'/Booking/send_instant_to_paypal') === FALSE)
{
 $config['csrf_protection'] = TRUE;
}
else
{
 $config['csrf_protection'] = FALSE;
}

Answer 3

The only thing I can think of right now is that you maybe did not load the form helper, but I'm not sure if it's being used for that. you can do this in the /config/autoload.php

I for example have this:

$autoload['helper'] = array('url', 'form', 'html', 'site_helper', 'upload_helper');

you can also load it in your function itself as follow:

function send_instant_to_paypal()
 {
 $this->load->helper('form');
 print_r($_POST);
 echo '<hr />';
 print_r($this->input->post());
 echo '<hr />';
 $id_booking = $this->input->post('id_booking');
 $title = $this->input->post('basket_description');
 $cost = ($this->input->post('fee_per_min') * $this->input->post('amount'));
 echo $id_booking;
 echo $title
 echo $cost
 }