Next Nov 3 PreviousDouble posting?
Suppose we have the following Web form:
<form action="report.php" method="post">
Value 1: <input type="text" name="value" />
Value 2: <input type="text" name="value" />
<button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>
And the following script to process the data:
<?php
echo $_POST["value"] . " " . $_POST["value"];
?>
What will it display in your browser if you fill in the values "double" and "post"?
A: "double post"
B: "Array Array"
C: "double double"
D: "post post"
E: An error
Answer
To answer this question it is best to look at the actual data send to the server. The complete request might look like:
POST /report.php HTTP/1.1
Host: www.scrivo.org
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 23
User-Agent: The browser
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Referer: http://www.scrivo.org/double_post.html
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8
value=double&value:post
So both values are sent to the server. But when PHP starts filling the $_POST superglobal it will first make an entry named "value" for the string "double" and directly after that it will use the same key to store "post". So $_POST["value"] will be overwritten by "post". And echoing this value twice will result in "post post" being printed. So answer D is correct.
You can use the same name for multiple input elements, but you'll have to include array brackets in the element names (e.g. name="value[]"). If you'd done that the entry set in the $_POST array will be an array with the values (and the correct answer would have been B).
