what is "php://input"? It mainly seen in webservice

Question

What is the relevance of php://input in the following snippet, and what is it used for?

$json_string = GPTake(array('json_string'));
$handle = fopen('php://input', 'r');
$jsonInput = fgets($handle);

$test = json_decode($jsonInput);

Answer 1

It gives you direct access to the input stream, as opposed to accessing the data after PHP has already applied the $_GET/$_POST super globals. Also, according to the manual, it is both less intensive and allows you to grab information before any php.ini directives have been applied.

For more information, read the PHP Manual on php://input

Answer 2

php:// is a scheme wrapper around various input/output streams that PHP supports. You can read up for here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/wrappers.php.php.

Specifically, php://input allows you to read the input stream directly.