How exactly is PHP creating superglobal $_POST, $_GET, $_COOKIE and $_REQUEST?

Question

I\'m sorry for confusing title of the question, I\'ll try to clarify what the issue is.

I\'m doing some work with Mongrel2 server and I\'m writing a PHP handler that has

Answer 1

Creating these variables is handled deep within the guts of PHP, in main/php_variables.c, in the php_auto_globals_create_get() and similar functions. From PHP 5.4.3:

static zend_bool php_auto_globals_create_get(const char *name, uint name_len TSRMLS_DC)
{
        zval *vars;

        if (PG(variables_order) && (strchr(PG(variables_order),'G') || strchr(PG(variables_order),'g'))) {
                sapi_module.treat_data(PARSE_GET, NULL, NULL TSRMLS_CC);
                vars = PG(http_globals)[TRACK_VARS_GET];
        } else {
                ALLOC_ZVAL(vars);
                array_init(vars);
                INIT_PZVAL(vars);
                if (PG(http_globals)[TRACK_VARS_GET]) {
                        zval_ptr_dtor(&PG(http_globals)[TRACK_VARS_GET]);
                }
                PG(http_globals)[TRACK_VARS_GET] = vars;
        }

        zend_hash_update(&EG(symbol_table), name, name_len + 1, &vars, sizeof(zval *), NULL);
        Z_ADDREF_P(vars);

        return 0; /* don't rearm */
}

This ends up calling directly into the SAPI (e.g, Apache module / CGI / FastCGI / whatever) to fetch variables. I don't think there's any way you can alter the way this works if you're in a weird environment where GET/POST/etc variables aren't where PHP expects them to be.