$_POST is empty. Nginx OSx

Question

I'm trying to access $_POST and it's empty.

If I try to access it on the root (ie. localhost), it WORKS. If I try to access in a different folder (ie. localhost/foo), it DOESN'T WORK.

Here is my config file:

 server {
        listen   80;    

        root /var/www;
        index index.php index.html index.htm;

        server_name localhost;

        error_page 404 /404.html;

        error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
              root /usr/share/nginx/www;
        }

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on the php-fpm socket
        location ~ \.php {
                try_files $uri =404;
                fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
                include fastcgi_params;
        }

}

Here is a sample RAW request:

POST /dev/post-test HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost
Cache-Control: no-cache

----WebKitFormBoundaryE19zNvXGzXaLvS5C
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="action"

store
----WebKitFormBoundaryE19zNvXGzXaLvS5C
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="id"

4315251
----WebKitFormBoundaryE19zNvXGzXaLvS5C

What is the problem?

Thanks.

Yes, even the `file_get_contents('php://input')` is empty. The `$_GET` works. — Maurício Giordano, Sep 12 '14 at 17:31
Just sent a post request with content type form-data and the body came empty. — Maurício Giordano, Sep 12 '14 at 17:35
Check if tag name and post name match. ex: name="q", $__POST['q']. Check php notice/error — Krii, Sep 12 '14 at 17:39
Already did it. Again, in root page it works (ie. `localhost`), but in another pages (ie. `localhost/dev`) don't. — Maurício Giordano, Sep 12 '14 at 17:47
Try `name="name[]"` instead of `name="name"` [this might help](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12468967/why-is-var-dump-post-not-showing-all-my-variables) — Krii, Sep 12 '14 at 17:49
Doesn't make sense at all this change. Again, this request works on root uri. — Maurício Giordano, Sep 12 '14 at 17:51
That’s not a [valid multipart message](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1992956/53114). You’re missing the *Content-Type* header field as well as the final `--` after the last boundary. — Gumbo, Sep 12 '14 at 17:57
But this request works on the `localhost` url. It just doesn't work when I try a different path, like `localhost/dev`. I think it is a nginx misconfiguration. — Maurício Giordano, Sep 12 '14 at 18:54

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 07 '17 at 20:40

The key on this differnet behavier is the trailing slash in the route.

For nginx the following are two different requests:

http://localhost/foo
http://localhost/foo/

The first one result in an internal 301 redirect (to index.php into that folder), where the $_POST values are lost.

More about this behavior and solution to prevent it, read the answers below: Nginx causes 301 redirect if there's no trailing slash

score -1 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 17 '20 at 20:49

I had same issue - empty $_POST variable.

And found that this happens if a request is sent with this header and the destionation is http instead of https:

Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1

In my case I was sending requests from my Unity game to it's server. And it turned out Unity adds that header to all requests sent from the game.

So I had to enable SSL for the server domain and switch from http to https. Once I did that - it worked.

$_POST is empty. Nginx OSx

2 Answers2

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