What is the difference between sending POST data through a form and directly through PHP?

When sending POST data through a form, the data is typically submitted by the user through the form fields on a webpage. This data is then sent to a PHP script for processing. On the other hand, sending POST data directly through PHP involves constructing the data in your PHP script and sending it to another script or endpoint. This method can be useful when you need to programmatically send data without user interaction. 

// Sending POST data through a form
<form action="process.php" method="post">
    <input type="text" name="username">
    <input type="password" name="password">
    <button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>

// Sending POST data directly through PHP
$data = array(
    'username' => 'john_doe',
    'password' => 'secret'
);

$ch = curl_init('https://example.com/api');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);

$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo $response;

Keywords

POST data form submission PHP $_POST data transmission

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