Where in PHP is the body of a POST request? How to get data from a form and from a JSON request?

In PHP, the body of a POST request can be accessed in several ways depending on the data type:

1. Form data (Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data)
   • Available in the superglobal array $_POST.
   • Example:

$name = $_POST['name'] ?? null;
$email = $_POST['email'] ?? null;

2. JSON format data (Content-Type: application/json)
   • The request body can be obtained via the stream php://input.
   • Then decode the JSON into an array or object.

$json = file_get_contents('php://input');
$data = json_decode($json, true); // true for array

$name = $data['name'] ?? null;
$email = $data['email'] ?? null;

Thus, $_POST is used for form data, and reading from php://input and decoding is used for JSON.