Get the raw request using PHP

Question

I'm looking for a way to get, using native PHP, the raw HTTP request that my script received, including headers and body. Reading the PHP documentation I cant found a standard way to get the raw request, regardless the HTTP method used.

For example, when the page test.php is requested, I want to get the complete request like:

GET /test.php HTTP/1.1
Host:....
....
....

The same in case of POST, HEAD, etc...

Seems very strange that there doesn't exist a method to access the raw request buffer!

Answer 1

The raw request is not available to PHP, because the request has already been consumed by the time PHP starts.

When PHP is running as an Apache module (mod_php), for instance, the request is received and parsed by Apache, and PHP is only invoked after Apache has parsed that request and determined that it refers to a file which should be processed by PHP. If PHP is running as a CGI or FastCGI handler, it never receives an HTTP request at all — it only sees the CGI form of the request, which is quite different.

Answer 2

Looking over the manual there doesn't seem to be an unparsed raw access to the request to match what you want, so I suspect you will need to re-build what you want from the $_SERVER variables. A quick search I found this class, made some small change to get the GET / HTTP/1.1, perhaps you will find it suits your needs.

<?php
/**
* Access the HTTP Request
* 
* Found on http://www.daniweb.com/web-development/php/code/216846/get-http-request-headers-and-body
*/
class http_request {

    /** additional HTTP headers not prefixed with HTTP_ in $_SERVER superglobal */
    public $add_headers = array('CONTENT_TYPE', 'CONTENT_LENGTH');

    /**
    * Construtor
    * Retrieve HTTP Body
    * @param Array Additional Headers to retrieve
    */
    function http_request($add_headers = false) {

        $this->retrieve_headers($add_headers);
        $this->body = @file_get_contents('php://input');
    }

    /**
    * Retrieve the HTTP request headers from the $_SERVER superglobal
    * @param Array Additional Headers to retrieve
    */
    function retrieve_headers($add_headers = false) {

        if ($add_headers) {
            $this->add_headers = array_merge($this->add_headers, $add_headers);
        }

        if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_METHOD'])) {
            $this->method = $_SERVER['HTTP_METHOD'];
            unset($_SERVER['HTTP_METHOD']);
        } else {
            $this->method = isset($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']) ? $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] : false;
        }
        $this->protocol = isset($_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']) ? $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] : false;
        $this->request_method = isset($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']) ? $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] : false;

        $this->headers = array();
        foreach($_SERVER as $i=>$val) {
            if (strpos($i, 'HTTP_') === 0 || in_array($i, $this->add_headers)) {
                $name = str_replace(array('HTTP_', '_'), array('', '-'), $i);
                $this->headers[$name] = $val;
            }
        }
    }

    /** 
    * Retrieve HTTP Method
    */
    function method() {
        return $this->method;
    }

    /** 
    * Retrieve HTTP Body
    */
    function body() {
        return $this->body;
    }

    /** 
    * Retrieve an HTTP Header
    * @param string Case-Insensitive HTTP Header Name (eg: "User-Agent")
    */
    function header($name) {
        $name = strtoupper($name);
        return isset($this->headers[$name]) ? $this->headers[$name] : false;
    }

    /**
    * Retrieve all HTTP Headers 
    * @return array HTTP Headers
    */
    function headers() {
        return $this->headers;
    }

    /**
    * Return Raw HTTP Request (note: This is incomplete)
    * @param bool ReBuild the Raw HTTP Request
    */
    function raw($refresh = false) {
        if (isset($this->raw) && !$refresh) {
            return $this->raw; // return cached
        }
        $headers = $this->headers();
        $this->raw = "{$this->method} {$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']} {$this->protocol}\r\n";

        foreach($headers as $i=>$header) {
                $this->raw .= "$i: $header\r\n";
        }
        $this->raw .= "\r\n{$this->body}";
        return $this->raw;
    }

}

/**
* Example Usage
* Echos the HTTP Request back to the client/browser
*/
$http_request = new http_request();

$resp = $http_request->raw();

echo nl2br($resp);
/* Result (less <br> tags)
    GET / HTTP/1.1
    HOST: localhost:8080
    USER-AGENT: Mozilla/5.0 ...
    ACCEPT: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;...
    ACCEPT-LANGUAGE: en-US,en;q=0.5
    ACCEPT-ENCODING: gzip, deflate
    DNT: 1
    COOKIE: PHPSESSID=...
    CONNECTION: keep-alive
*/
?>

P.S: Dont forget to htmlentities() them values on output :)

Answer 3

If you are on an Apache machine try this:

function get_raw_http_request() {

  $request = "{$_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']} {$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']} {$_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']}\r\n";

  foreach (getallheaders() as $name => $value) {
    $request .= "$name: $value\r\n";
  }

  $request .= "\r\n" . file_get_contents('php://input');

  return $request;
}

http://php.net/manual/en/function.getallheaders.php