The Input Package

This package comprises of four classes, Input\Inputand several sub-classes extended from it: Input\Cookie, Input\Files, and Input\Json. An input object is generally owned by the application and explicitly added to an application class as a public property, such as can be found in Application\AbstractApplication.

The intent of this package is to abstract out the input source to allow code to be reused in different applications and in different contexts through dependency injection. For example, a controller could inspect the request variables directly using JRequest. But suppose there is a requirement to add a web service that carries input as a JSON payload. Instead of writing a second controller to handle the different input source, it would be much easier to inject an input object that is tailored for the type of input source, into the controller.

Using a Input\Input object through dependency injection also makes code easier to test.

Input\Input

Construction

Unlike its predecessor JRequest which is used statically, the Input\Input class is meant to be used as an instantiated concrete class. Among other things, this makes testing of the class, and the classes that are coupled to it, easier, but also means the developer has a lot more flexibility since this allows for dependency injection.

The constructor takes two optional array arguments. The first is the source data which defaults to a copy of the superglobal $_REQUEST if omitted or null. The second is a general options array for which "filter" is the only option key currently supported. If omitted, Input\Input will just use the default instance of Filter\Input.

use Joomla\Filter\InputFilter;
use Joomla\Input;

// Default construction (data comes from $_REQUEST).
$input = new Input\Input;

// Construction with data injection.
$input = new Input\Input(array('foo' => 'bar'));

// Construction with a custom filter.
$filter = new InputFilter(/* custom settings */);
$input = new Input\Input(null, $filter);

Usage

The most common usage of the Input\Input class will be through the get method which is roughly equivalent to the old JRequest::getVar method. The get method takes three arguments: a key name, a default value and a filter name (defaulting to "cmd" if omitted). The filter name is any valid filter type that the Filter\Input class, or the custom class provided in the constructor, supports.

The set method is also equivalent to JRequest::setVar as is the getMethod method.

use Joomla\Input;

$input = new Input\Input;

// Get the "foo" variable from the request.
$foo = $input->get('foo');

// If the variable is not available, use a default.
$foo = $input->get('foo', 'bar');

// Apply a custom filter to the variable, in this case, get the raw value.
$foo = $input->get('body', null, 'raw');

// Explicitly set an input value.
$input->set('hidemainmenu', true);

// Get the request method used (assuming a web application example), returned in upper case.
if ($input->getMethod() == 'POST')
{
	// Do something.
}

The filter types available when using Filter\InputFilter are:

• INT, INTEGER - Matches the first, signed integer value.
• UINT - Matches the first unsigned integer value.
• FLOAT, DOUBLE - Matches the first floating point number.
• BOOL, BOOLEAN - Converts the value to a boolean data type.
• WORD - Allows only case insensitive A-Z and underscores.
• ALNUM - Allows only case insensitive A-Z and digits.
• CMD - Allows only case insensitive A-Z, underscores, periods and dashes.
• BASE64 - Allows only case insensitive A-Z, forward slash, plus and equals.
• STRING - Returns a fully decoded string.
• HTML - Returns a string with HTML entities and tags intact, subject to the white or black lists in the filter.
• ARRAY - Returns the source as an array with no additional filtering applied.
• PATH - Matches legal characters for a path.
• USERNAME - Strips a select set of characters from the source (\x00, -, \x1F, \x7F, <, >, ", ', %, &).
• RAW - The raw string is returned with no filtering

If no filter type is specified, the default handling of Filter\Input is to return an aggressively cleaned and trimmed string, stripped of any HTML or encoded characters.

Additionally, magic getters are available as shortcuts to specific filter types.

use Joomla\Input;

$input = new Input\Input;

// Apply the "INT" filter type.
$id = $input->getInt('id');

// Apply the "WORD" filter type.
$folder = $input->getWord('folder', 'images');

// Apply the "USERNAME" filter.
$ntLogin = $input->getUsername('login');

// Using an unknown filter. It works, but is treated the same as getString.
$foo = $input->getFoo('foo');

The class also supports a magic get method that allows you shortcut access to other superglobals such as $_POST, etc, but returning them as a Input\Input object.

use Joomla\Input;

$input = new Input\Input;

// Get the $_POST superglobal.
$post = $input->post;

// Access a server setting as if it's a Input\Input object.
if ($input->server->get('SERVER_ADDR'))
{
	// Do something with the IP address.
}

// Access an ENV variable.
$host = $input->env->get('HOSTNAME');

Serialization

The Input\Input class implements the Serializable interface so that it can be safely serialized and unserialized. Note that when serializing the "ENV" and "SERVER" inputs are removed from the class as they may conflict or inappropriately overwrite settings during unserialization. This allows for Input\Input objects to be safely used with cached data.

Input\Cookie

Can you help improve this section of the README?

Input\Files

The Input\Files class provides a way to handle file attachments as payloads of POSTed forms. Consider the following form which is assumed to handle an array of files to be attached (through some JavaScript behavior):

<form method="POST" action="/files" enctype="multipart/form-data">
   Attachments:
   <input type="file" name="attachments[]" />
   <button>Add another file</button>
</form>

Access the files from the request could be done as follows:

use Joomla\Input;

// By default, a new Input\Files will inspect $_FILES.
$input = new Input\Files;
$files = $input->get('attachments');

echo 'Inspecting $_FILES:';
var_dump($_FILES);

echo 'Inspecting $files:';
var_dump($files);

Inspecting $_FILES:

array
  'name' =>
    array
      0 => string 'aje_sig_small.png' (length=17)
      1 => string '' (length=0)
  'type' =>
    array
      0 => string 'image/png' (length=9)
      1 => string '' (length=0)
  'tmp_name' =>
    array
      0 => string '/private/var/tmp/phpPfGfnN' (length=26)
      1 => string '' (length=0)
  'error' =>
    array
      0 => int 0
      1 => int 4
  'size' =>
    array
      0 => int 16225
      1 => int 0

Inspecting $files:

array
  0 =>
    array
      'name' => string 'sig_small.png' (length=17)
      'type' => string 'image/png' (length=9)
      'tmp_name' => string '/private/var/tmp/phpybKghO' (length=26)
      'error' => int 0
      'size' => int 16225
  1 =>
    array
      'name' => string '' (length=0)
      'type' => string '' (length=0)
      'tmp_name' => string '' (length=0)
      'error' => int 4
      'size' => int 0

Unlike the PHP $_FILES supergobal, this array is very easier to parse. The example above assumes two files were submitted, but only one was specified. The 'blank' file contains an error code (see PHP file upload errors).

The set method is disabled in Input\Files.

Input\Json

Can you help improve this section of the README?

Mocking the Input Package

For simple cases where you only need to mock the Input\Input class, the following snippet can be used:

$mockInput = $this->getMockBuilder('Joomla\Input\Input')->getMock();

Changes From 1.x

The following changes have been made to the Input package since 1.x.

Pass By Reference

Input, Input\Cookie, and Input\Files all use the source superglobal by reference in 1.x. In 2.0, the reference is removed.

Installation via Composer

Add "joomla/input": "~3.0" to the require block in your composer.json and then run composer install.

{
	"require": {
		"joomla/input": "~3.0"
	}
}

Alternatively, you can simply run the following from the command line:

composer require joomla/input "~3.0"

If you want to include the test sources, use

composer require --prefer-source joomla/input "~3.0"