PHP: whats the total length of a post global variable?

Question

I was wondering if anybody knows the total length that a post global could be. e.g:

$_POST['formInput'] = "hello world, how long can i be?"; 

I am creating a site where someone will enter an unknown amount of chars into a textarea, so potentially it could be 2 pages on a word document. So if anybody knows of any other methods of how i can do this apart from using a post global? (it cant be saved in a file, as its important data that i dont want other people to find) That would be very helpful.

Thanks

Answer 1

Check your php.ini for post_max_size. This is typically about 8mb by default, but if you're on shared-hosting, it could definitely vary.

; Maximum size of POST data that PHP will accept. post_max_size = 8M

You'll have to use $_POST if you wish to send large amounts of data to the server. For further study, I'd suggest checking out POST Method Uploads in the documentation.

Answer 2

$_POST is populated from the body of a HTTP-request. Since there are no restrictions on the size of a HTTP-request, there are no restrictions in the protocol layer. However PHP has some limitations on how much input it will read. You can control this with the ini-setting post_max_size