Process Form Inputs with PHP

Submitted by NanoDano on Wed, 08/05/2020 - 01:37

Introduction

An essential task for most web applications is the ability to take user input. We will look at several common tasks in PHP like:

How to access GET query parameters from the URL
How to use forms to submit GET and POST values
Understanding the security implications of accepting user data and how to protect yourself
Creating a form to submit GET or POST requests
Handling checkbox and multi-select fields
Handing file uploads

Important security concerns

Before we look at accepting and processing user input, it is very important to be aware of the security risks involved.

There is one rule to remember: Never trust user input.

If you output any of the data back to the web page, you open yourself up to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks and potential cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks.
If you use the input as part of a file path you open yourself up to local and remote file inclusion attacks (LFI/RFI).
If you use the data in a database query, you risk SQL injection that can corrupt your database, cause data loss, or even expose sensitive data.
If the data is logged it could lead to log tainting that could lead to exploitation.
Users can send any data they want and are not only limited to the options you provided in the form.

Always sanitize and validate user input

If you output the user input (also called "reflecting") be sure to sanitize any HTML or script elements. This is also called "escaping" the text. You can use the htmlspecialchars() for this.

If you store the user input in a database, be sure you use a prepared statement and never use the data to create a raw string query.

If you use the user input as part of a file path for loading a file or accessing a URL, you must be very careful to ensure there is no directory traversal. Ensure users cannot use ../, absolute paths, or other directory manipulation techniques. Be sure that a user cannot manipulate the input to access a directory or file they are not supposed to. One function to assist with that is basename().

Using GET method

With GET, the parameters are passed in the URL and available via $_GET. This is convenient when you want the data exposed. It is particularly useful if you want someone to be able to bookmark the URL. For example if it is a search query that they want to bookmark or share. It is a bad idea for forms with sensitive information like passwords or credit card numbers. The password would be visible in the URL and could even be stored in the browser history. Web servers also tend to log the URL being accessed which would include the data, but they don't typically log the POST content.

Example url with GET parameters:

http://localhost:8000/index.php?some_key=some_value&other_key=other_value

You can manually craft a URL with the GET query parameters or you can use a form with method="GET" like this:

<html>
<body>
<form method="GET">
    <input type="text" name="my_field" value="some text" />
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

You can access the GET query parameters with a special constant named $_GET. Here is an example:

<html>
<body>

<?php
if (isset($_GET['my_field'])) {
    // Exists
    echo "Value provided: " . $_GET['my_field'];
} else {
    // Does not exist
    echo 'No value provided.';
}
?>

<form method="GET">
    <input type="text" name="my_field" value="some text" />
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

Using POST method

Post is more secure than GET because it is not exposed in the URL. Data is available via $_POST It is still part of the HTTP request though and is passed in plain-text unless you are explicitly using SSL/TLS. The POST content is passed in the body of the request as opposed to the header like a GET request. POST is the method you want to use for passwords and other data you do not want in the visible URL.

<html>
<body>

<?php
if (isset($_POST['my_field'])) {
    // Exists
    echo "Value provided: " . $_POST['my_field'];
} else {
    // Does not exist
    echo 'No value provided.';
}
?>

<form method="POST">
    <input type="text" name="my_field" value="some text" />
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

Handling checkboxes and mutli-select fields

Any field that can have multiple selections will return an array with all of the values.

<?php

foreach ($_POST['my_checkboxes'] as $checkbox_value) {
    echo $checkbox_value;
}

In the HTML forms, checkbox names have square brackets like this:

<input type="checkbox" name="my_checkboxes[]" value="A" />
<input type="checkbox" name="my_checkboxes[]" value="B" />
<input type="checkbox" name="my_checkboxes[]" value="C" />

Multi-select fields look like this:

<select name="my_multiselect" multiple="multiple">
    <option value="A">A</option>
    <option value="B">B</option>
    <option value="C">C</option>
</select>

Handling file uploads

A common task with forms is to upload a file. There are a couple things to be aware of when you want to upload a file

The form needs to be POST method
The form needs to have the propery enctype="multipart/form-data"
The file_uploads setting must be On in the server's php.ini file. This is usually on by default already.
The input field should be of type file

Here is an example:

<form method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
  Select image to upload:
  <input type="file" name="my_file">
  <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

You can also submit multiple files as an array:

<form method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
  Select image to upload:
  <input type="file" name="my_files[]">
  <input type="file" name="my_files[]">
  <input type="file" name="my_files[]">
  <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

In the PHP backend, you won't access this file via $_POST. Instead, you will use the constant $_FILES. $_FILES is an associative array with keys named after the file input name.

Each file will have a few values:

name - Original filename that user named it
type - MIME type, like "text/plain".
size - Number of bytes
tmp_name - The path to the temporary file uploaded to the server
error - If there was any error

For example, we could access $_FILES['my_file']['tmp_name'].

Typically you will move the temporary file to a permanent location on the server. You can do this with the move_uploaded_file() function.

For example:

move_uploaded_file($_FILES['my_file']['tmp_name'], __DIR__ . '/uploads/file.txt')

To learn more about files and directories in PHP check out my tutorial, Working with Files and Directories with PHP.

Conclusion

After reading this you should be feel comfortable doing the following in PHP:

How to access GET query parameters from the URL
How to use forms to submit GET and POST values
Understanding the security implications of accepting user data and how to protect yourself
Creating a form to submit GET or POST requests
Handling checkbox and multi-select fields
Handing file uploads