Empty $_POST and/or $_FILES in PHP?

Hey!

I’m assuming that you’ve reached this article because you’re (probably desperate) looking for a solution to fix your issues with empty $_POST or $_FILES variables in PHP, right?

This content was originally posted on my Medium blog.

Well, I was pretty much like you up to 2 days ago and what I can tell you is, the solution might be far simpler than what you’re thinking!

Making a long sentence short: Check on your php.ini file if the enable_post_data_reading property is On.

The PHP relies on that property to know whether populate or not populate the $_POST and $_FILES superglobal variables.

Back to my story …

I first noticed the problem when trying to make some changes to my client’s project, an OpenCart based e-commerce. Basically, the entire store was working fine, but I couldn’t login at all, neither as a client or administrator.

After spending some days googling about OpenCart and a possible authentication issue, with any success at all, I realized that the problem could be on the PHP configuration when I remembered that my Mac OS was updated few months before, which also has made some changes to the Apache and PHP settings!

Tada~! Solution found!

Looking into the PHP ini file, I did figure out that the property enable_post_data_reading was set to Off, while it’s advised to be On. Actually, it’s supposed to be On by default, but for some unknown reason, it was turned off by the time I’ve updated the OS!

Once that property was set back to On, everything starts working back. 🙂

By the way, if you need to check all other properties from the PHP settings, you can refer to this website:

http://php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php

See you soon! Cheers. 🍻