Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

[bill_from_jpt]

Hello,

i have a real simple a5w page that is called by an external program. The call uses POST method to send a few fields in.

But when I get the Request.Body data, I only get the first word up to (not including) the "=" sign.

I tried urldecode (which I believe should not be needed with POST data) but it did not change anything.

BTW, the POST data is visible in its entirely in the logs of the app server, so it is being sent correctly.

Has anyone found a working way of getting the full text of request.body into a local string variable?

[Lenny Forziati]

Re: Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

The full body of the POST should be in Request.Body already.

I'm curious about what you are doing with it though. The name-value pairs in the body will already be parsed for you into Request.Variables, so accessing them this way will be far more efficient than trying to parse the body yourself.

[Steve Wood]

Re: Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

The name-value pairs in the body will already be parsed for you into Request.Variables

I didn't know that, even though you probably told me. I have a mile long extract_string() sections in my POST listening pages.

Bill, here is a quick method to get a dump of the POST, formatted for easy reading. This assumes the fields are separated by &.

dim cc as c = request.body
save_to_file(stritran(cc,"&",crlf()+"&"),"c:\cc.txt")

[bill_from_jpt]

Re: Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

Thanks Lenny and Steve for your replies.

Lenny, to answer your question, I was planning to do some regex and string manipulation on the entire body and (en masse) and then parse it.

But seeing your posts has caused me to re-think this and leverage the parsed data as well as Steve's code (which I am using to debug the callback as we speak).

[Steve Wood]

Re: Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

Lenny,

I find I have to go through about the same amount of work whether I use extract_string or request.variables. In both cases I have to check that the var exists before using it. If I use request.variables, I still need to store the request var in a local variable to use efficiently later on.

dim lv as p
lv.test = if(variable_exists("request.variables.test"),request.variables.test,"my default value")

- or -

if variable_exists("request.variables.test") = .f.
goto abortprocess
END
end if
...
abortprocess:

[Lenny Forziati]

Re: Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

Lenny,

I find I have to go through about the same amount of work whether I use extract_string or request.variables.

Your extract_string() to extract and parse the variables is never going to be as fast as not having to extract and parse the data that has already been handled for you. You still need to validate the input before using it, and that need will never go away, but you are wasting CPU cycles by parsing in Xbasic what has already been parsed at a lower level by highly-optimized (and thoroughly tested) code dedicated to that purpose.

In a side-by-side test of a single page execution, you may not see a performance difference, but this is the type of extra code that will have a significant impact in a multi-user system. By making the server work harder than it must on each request, simultaneous requests cannot complete as quickly. As these requests stack up, the impact can be exponential and the number of users that your specific application can support may be severely limited.

[Steve Wood]

Re: Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

Thanks Lenny, I'll convert all of my code as this makes sense. I guess it was easy for me to equate "programming effort" with performance when I didn't know the cost of each line of code. There are many newer functions that use less resources, such as using the new variable_exists() instead of slower eval_valid().

[gregincolumbus]

Re: Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

Lenny,

I am trying to wrap my head around this.....so if the request.body contains the following data (response from Payflow Link at Paypal)

RESULT=0&AUTHCODE=010101&RESPMSG=Approved&AVSDATA=YNY&PNREF=V63F28770576&HO
STCODE=&INVOICE=3452345&AMOUNT=117.03&TAX=&METHOD=CC&TYPE=S&DESCRIPTION=1+f
elt+hat%2C+Model+FC&CUSTID=NT1000&NAME=Nancy+Thompson&ADDRESS=1428+Elm+Stre
et&CITY=Springwood&STATE=CA&ZIP=66666&COUNTRY=USA&PHONE=121-325-
4253&FAX=&[email protected]&USER1=User1+value&USER2=&USER3=&USER4
=&USER5=&USER6=&USER7=&USER8=&USER9=&USER10=&NAMETOSHIP=Nancy+Thompson&ADDR
ESSTOSHIP=1428+Elm+Street&CITYTOSHIP=Springwood&STATETOSHIP=&ZIPTOSHIP=6666
6&COUNTRYCODE=USA&PHONETOSHIP=121-325-
4253&FAXTOSHIP=&EMAILTOSHIP=&CSCMATCH=Y

Then I can extract the data by doing the following

dim RESULT as c = request.variable.RESULT
dim USER1 as c = request.variable.USER1

etc...

Is that correct?

[Jim Coltz]

Re: Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

Yes, but you'll need to use request.variables

[gregincolumbus]

Re: Reading the Request.Body of an HTTP post

Jim

Once again I appreciate your help....thank you!!

Greg