Joomla error: 'Illegal variable _files or _env

Question

I am getting this error in Joomla:

Illegal variable `_files` or `_env` or `_get` or `_post` or `_cookie`
or `_server` or `_session` or `globals` passed to script.

I didn't get much help googling.

Answer 1

I had to fix this for joomla 1.5

Here is how I did it

Find the file /{your_joomla_folder}/libraries/joomla/environment/request.php

And make the error friendlier

function clean()
{
    JRequest::_cleanArray( $_FILES , false, 'FILES');
    JRequest::_cleanArray( $_ENV , false, 'ENV' );
    JRequest::_cleanArray( $_GET , false, 'GET' );
    JRequest::_cleanArray( $_POST , false, 'POST' );
    JRequest::_cleanArray( $_COOKIE , false, 'COOKIE' );
    JRequest::_cleanArray( $_SERVER , false, 'SERVER' );

    if (isset( $_SESSION )) {
        JRequest::_cleanArray( $_SESSION , false, 'SESSION' );
    }

    $REQUEST    = $_REQUEST;
    $GET        = $_GET;
    $POST       = $_POST;
    $COOKIE     = $_COOKIE;
    $FILES      = $_FILES;
    $ENV        = $_ENV;
    $SERVER     = $_SERVER;

    if (isset ( $_SESSION )) {
        $SESSION = $_SESSION;
    }

    foreach ($GLOBALS as $key => $value)
    {
        if ( $key != 'GLOBALS' ) {
            unset ( $GLOBALS [ $key ] );
        }
    }
    $_REQUEST   = $REQUEST;
    $_GET       = $GET;
    $_POST      = $POST;
    $_COOKIE    = $COOKIE;
    $_FILES     = $FILES;
    $_ENV       = $ENV;
    $_SERVER    = $SERVER;

    if (isset ( $SESSION )) {
        $_SESSION = $SESSION;
    }

    // Make sure the request hash is clean on file inclusion
    $GLOBALS['_JREQUEST'] = array();
}
function _cleanArray( &$array, $globalise=false, $type=null )
{
    static $banned = array( '_files', '_env', '_get', '_post', '_cookie', '_server', '_session', 'globals' );

    foreach ($array as $key => $value)
    {
        // PHP GLOBALS injection bug
        $failed = in_array( strtolower( $key ), $banned );
        $is_injection = false;
        if($failed){
            $is_injection = true;
        }

        // PHP Zend_Hash_Del_Key_Or_Index bug
        $failed |= is_numeric( $key );
        if ($failed) {
            if($type){
                $str = $type;
            }else{
                $str = implode( '</b> or <b>', $banned );
            }
            throw new Exception( 'Illegal variable <b>' . $str . '</b> passed to script.'.(($is_injection)?' (globals injection)': ' key "'.$key.'" is numeric in '.$str) );
            //jexit( 'Illegal variable <b>' . implode( '</b> or <b>', $banned ) . '</b> passed to script.' );
        }
        if ($globalise) {
            $GLOBALS[$key] = $value;
        }
    }
}

In my case an AJAX script was uploading files as

$_FILES = array(
    0=>array(
        [name] => 6767.bmp
    [type] => image/bmp
    [tmp_name] => /tmp/phpfbIzXU
    [error] => 0
    [size] => 12774
    ),
);

The 0 was causing problems, so because this was a minimal script I could simply transfer the info from $_FILES to somewhere else before joomla loaded

for example like this:

$files = array();
foreach($_FILES as $f){
    $files[] = $f;
}
$_FILES = array('files'=>$files);

... joomla launch code...
define( '_JEXEC', 1 );
define('JPATH_BASE', realpath(dirname(dirname(__FILE__).'/')));
define( 'DS', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR );
require JPATH_BASE . DS . 'includes' . DS . 'defines.php';
require JPATH_BASE . DS . 'includes' . DS . 'framework.php';

Note that you can't use the variable $files after including /includes/framework.php as joomla will unhelpfully overwrite it with null

Answer 2

The only solution that worked is to commnet out the following line in request.php file

Find the file /{your_joomla_folder}/libraries/joomla/environment/request.php

// $failed |= is_numeric( $key );

Answer 3

You'll see this error if you try to specify a URL parameter whose name consists solely of digits, e.g.

http://www.example.com/?1234567=test

or if you try to use a joomla-reserved variable, e.g.

http://www.example.com/?_files=test

It's not a great error message. If you have access to a unix terminal, you can debug these kind of problems with some command-line tools, e.g.

$ find /var/www/html -exec grep -l 'Illegal variable' {} \;
/var/www/html/libraries/joomla/environment/request.php

This is a fictional joomla installation, assuming a fairly standard DocumentRoot. The result immediately confirms this is a Joomla error, and reports which file caused it. Extract from that file:

static $banned = array( '_files', '_env', '_get', '_post', '_cookie', '_server', '_session', 'globals' );

foreach ($array as $key => $value)
{   
    // PHP GLOBALS injection bug 
    $failed = in_array( strtolower( $key ), $banned );

    // PHP Zend_Hash_Del_Key_Or_Index bug 
    $failed |= is_numeric( $key );

    if ($failed) {
        jexit( 'Illegal variable <b>' . implode( '</b> or <b>', $banned ) . '</b> passed to script.' );
    }
    ...
}

Note that the error message is particularly misleading because, not only is in thrown in the case of a reserved variable name, but also if the parameter name is numeric.

Answer 4

It's not an error PHP generates, it's an error that seems to belong to Joomla!. I found this page after 20 seconds of Googling for "Illegal variable".