How to get form data using POST method in PHP ?

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PHP provides a way to read raw POST data of an HTML Form using php:// which is used for accessing PHP’s input and output streams. In this article, we will use the mentioned way in three different ways. We will use php://input, which is a read-only PHP stream.

We will create a basic HTML form page where we can use all the possible approaches one at a time.
HTML Code:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
<head> 
    <title>POST Body</title> 
    <style> 
        form { 
            margin: 30px 0px; 
        } 
        input { 
            display: block; 
            margin: 10px 15px; 
            padding: 8px 10px; 
            font-size: 16px; 
        } 
        div { 
            font-size: 20px; 
            margin: 0px 15px; 
        } 
        h2 { 
            color: green; 
            margin: 20px 15px; 
        } 
    </style> 
</head> 
<body> 
    <h2>zambiatek</h2> 
    <form method="post"> 
        <input type="text" name="username"  
                           placeholder="Enter Username"> 
        <input type="password" name="password"
                               placeholder="Enter Password"> 
        <input type="submit" name="submit-btn" 
                             value="submit"> 
    </form> 
    <br> 
</body> 
</html> 

Below examples illustrate the approach:
Example 1: In this example, we will use file_get_contents() Function. The file_get_contents() function is used to get the data in string format.

Syntax:
```
file_get_contents('php://input');
```

PHP Code:

<?php  
    if (isset($_POST["submit-btn"])) { 
        $post_data = file_get_contents('php://input'); 
        echo "<div> POST BODY <br>".$post_data."</div>";         
    } 
?> 

Output:

Example 2: In this example, we will use print_r() Function. It is a much simpler way to get the POST data and that is using the print_r() function. This will give the output in the form of an array.

Syntax:
```
print_r($_POST);
```
PHP Code:
<?php

    if (isset($_POST["submit-btn"])) {

        echo "<div> POST BODY <br>";

        print_r($_POST);

        echo "</div>";

    }

?>
Output:

Example 3: We can also use var_dump() function which will give us an array as well but with a bit more information.

Syntax:
```
var_dump($_POST);
```
PHP Code:
<?php

    if (isset($_POST["submit-btn"])) {

        echo "<div> POST BODY <br>";

        var_dump($_POST);

        echo "</div>";

    }

?>
Output: