Dots and spaces in variable names from external sources are converted to underscores

Question

Trying a bit of AJAX, and I find that much of my data is littered with underscores! Documentation confirms that this is working as intended. Any way to pass my form information to PHP intact? I'm using CodeIgniter, so my pass looks like /controller/function/variable, receiving controller:

controller{
 function($v=0){#what once was hello world is now hello_world...}
}

I can't very well do an undo, data might contain an underscore.

Thanks, Brandon

Edit:

I think it is converting the value. Here is the gist of the code:

<form>
<text input name="tbox"/>
<submit/>
</form>

 ajax_handler(
    v = form.name() + form.val()
    do_ajax('/controller/function/v')
 )

controller(){
   function($v=0){#spaces and periods in v are converted to underscore}
} 

thanks again, brandon

here is the actual code:

<input type="text" id="tusername" name="tusername" class="checkable tbox"/>
<button id="unsubmit" name="wizard" class="formable">next</button>


        $('.formable').live('click',function(event){
            event.preventDefault();
            var n = $(this).attr('id');
            var a = $(this).attr('name');
            var v = dosend(); 
            $.ajax({
                    url: '/form/'+n+'/'+v,
                    type: 'post',
                    success: function(result){
                         alert(result);
                    }  
            });
            function dosend(){
                    var inputs = $(":input");
                    var s = "";
                    inputs.each(function(){
                            s += $(this).attr('name')+":";
                            s += $(this).val()+";";
                    });
                    return s;
            }
    });

   class Form extends Controller{
       function Form(){
           parent::Controller();
           session_start();
       }
       function unsubmit($v=6){
           print $v;
       }
   }

anything in the string that gets passed to the controller's function that is a space or period gets converted to underscore. I type hello world into this box, and it prints out hello_world.

            $w = explode(';',$v);
            foreach($w as $i){
                    $x = explode(':',$i);
                    if(isset($x[1])){
                      $_AJAX[$x[0]] = $x[1];
                    }
            }

Answer 1

Php converts no data but variable names.
Are you sure you cannot change a field name?

Answer 2

As far as I'm aware, no.

Like you said, PHP is renaming variables as documented on the Variables From External Sources PHP manual page:

Note: Dots and spaces in variable names are converted to underscores. For example <input name="a.b" /> becomes $_REQUEST["a_b"].

I'm not sure why this would make a difference, though. The data stored in that variable remains unchanged.

Answer 3

If you need them preserved, considering sending as something else then application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data. For instance, this nice questioneer tried to use JSON, which you can parse at your leisure: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3063787/handle-json-request-in-php/3063810

JSON would be easier to parse. You can however use the application/x-www-form-urlencoded form (which wouldn't handle file-uploads), file_get_contents('php://input'), and parse the string to your liking yourself.

With a dirty, dirty hack, I was delighted to be told just last week this can also work for multipart/form-data: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1361673/get-raw-post-data

---

Missed the "'m just using post, separating keys and values with ':' and pairs with ';' " apparantly:

        $.ajax({
                url: '/form/'+n+'/'+v,
                type: 'post',
                contentType: 'text/plain', //<-- add this

Possibly parse by this:

    <?php
    $post = file_get_contents('php://input');
    $pairs = explode(':',$post);
    $values = array();
    foreach($pairs as $pair){
         $vars = explode(':',$pair,2);
         $values[$vars[0]] = $vars[1];
    }
    ?>

Answer 4

Found mention of this at http://sholsinger.com/archive/2009/04/passing-email-addresses-in-urls-with-codeigniter/, and is now resolved.

Periods in values that are passed via URI segment can be improperly converted to underscores under specific conditions. For this to happen, you must be using mod_rewrite and also your RewriteRule directive passes the rewritten segments through the query string. Example:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]

To fix the problem you must edit the configuration value uri_protocol. The default value is 'AUTO'. It must be set to 'QUERY_STRING'. Example:

$config['uri_protocol'] = 'QUERY_STRING';