AngularJs $http.post() does not send data

Question

Could anyone tell me why the following statement does not send the post data to the designated url? The url is called but on the server when I print $_POST - I get an empty

Answer 1

Didn't find a complete code snippet of how to use $http.post method to send data to the server and why it was not working in this case.

Explanations of below code snippet...

1. I am using jQuery $.param function to serialize the JSON data to www post data

2. Setting the Content-Type in the config variable that will be passed along with the request of angularJS $http.post that instruct the server that we are sending data in www post format.

3. Notice the $htttp.post method, where I am sending 1st parameter as url, 2nd parameter as data (serialized) and 3rd parameter as config.

Remaining code is self understood.

$scope.SendData = function () {
           // use $.param jQuery function to serialize data from JSON 
            var data = $.param({
                fName: $scope.firstName,
                lName: $scope.lastName
            });

            var config = {
                headers : {
                    'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=utf-8;'
                }
            }

            $http.post('/ServerRequest/PostDataResponse', data, config)
            .success(function (data, status, headers, config) {
                $scope.PostDataResponse = data;
            })
            .error(function (data, status, header, config) {
                $scope.ResponseDetails = "Data: " + data +
                    "<hr />status: " + status +
                    "<hr />headers: " + header +
                    "<hr />config: " + config;
            });
        };

Look at the code example of $http.post method here.

Answer 2

I've been using the accepted answer's code (Felipe's code) for a while and it's been working great (thanks, Felipe!).

However, recently I discovered that it has issues with empty objects or arrays. For example, when submitting this object:

{
    A: 1,
    B: {
        a: [ ],
    },
    C: [ ],
    D: "2"
}

PHP doesn't seem to see B and C at all. It gets this:

[
    "A" => "1",
    "B" => "2"
]

A look at the actual request in Chrome shows this:

A: 1
:
D: 2

I wrote an alternative code snippet. It seems to work well with my use-cases but I haven't tested it extensively so use with caution.

I used TypeScript because I like strong typing but it would be easy to convert to pure JS:

angular.module("MyModule").config([ "$httpProvider", function($httpProvider: ng.IHttpProvider) {
    // Use x-www-form-urlencoded Content-Type
    $httpProvider.defaults.headers.post["Content-Type"] = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=utf-8";

    function phpize(obj: Object | any[], depth: number = 1): string[] {
        var arr: string[] = [ ];
        angular.forEach(obj, (value: any, key: string) => {
            if (angular.isObject(value) || angular.isArray(value)) {
                var arrInner: string[] = phpize(value, depth + 1);
                var tmpKey: string;
                var encodedKey = encodeURIComponent(key);
                if (depth == 1) tmpKey = encodedKey;
                else tmpKey = `[${encodedKey}]`;
                if (arrInner.length == 0) {
                    arr.push(`${tmpKey}=`);
                }
                else {
                    arr = arr.concat(arrInner.map(inner => `${tmpKey}${inner}`));
                }
            }
            else {
                var encodedKey = encodeURIComponent(key);
                var encodedValue;
                if (angular.isUndefined(value) || value === null) encodedValue = "";
                else encodedValue = encodeURIComponent(value);

                if (depth == 1) {
                    arr.push(`${encodedKey}=${encodedValue}`);
                }
                else {
                    arr.push(`[${encodedKey}]=${encodedValue}`);
                }
            }
        });
        return arr;
    }

    // Override $http service's default transformRequest
    (<any>$httpProvider.defaults).transformRequest = [ function(data: any) {
        if (!angular.isObject(data) || data.toString() == "[object File]") return data;
        return phpize(data).join("&");
    } ];
} ]);

It's less efficient than Felipe's code but I don't think it matters much since it should be immediate compared to the overall overhead of the HTTP request itself.

Now PHP shows:

[
    "A" => "1",
    "B" => [
        "a" => ""
    ],
    "C" => "",
    "D" => "2"
]

As far as I know it's not possible to get PHP to recognize that B.a and C are empty arrays, but at least the keys appear, which is important when there's code that relies on the a certain structure even when its essentially empty inside.

Also note that it converts undefineds and nulls to empty strings.

Answer 3

If your using PHP this is a easy way to access an array in PHP from an AngularJS POST.

$params = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'),true);

Answer 4

When I had this problem the parameter I was posting turned out to be an array of objects instead of a simple object.

Answer 5

I have had a similar issue, and I wonder if this can be useful as well: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11443066

var xsrf = $.param({fkey: "key"});
$http({
    method: 'POST',
    url: url,
    data: xsrf,
    headers: {'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'}
})

Regards,

Answer 6

Similar to the OP's suggested working format & Denison's answer, except using $http.post instead of just $http and is still dependent on jQuery.

The good thing about using jQuery here is that complex objects get passed properly; against manually converting into URL parameters which may garble the data.

$http.post( 'request-url', jQuery.param( { 'message': message } ), {
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' }
});