is it possible to read the action value of a form with php?

Question

I'm wondering if there's a way to read, or extract, the value from the action parameter of a form tag in php? <form name="..." method="post" action="*this*">

This code return each value of each element inside the form, but not from the form -tag itself:

foreach($_POST as $_FORM_value){
    $_FORM_values[] = $_FORM_value;
}

Any ideas?

Now I'm just using a hidden field to execute the correct script:

<input type="hidden" name="load-script" value="ScriptName" readonly>

And at the very top, before hta page is starting to load and any html is sent to the client, I'm checking to se if any form has been submittet:

if(isset($_POST['load-script'])){include dir_setup.'post.exec.php';}

And inside post.exec.php :

#   get name from submit-button
    foreach($_POST as $_FORM_ELEMENT_name=>$_FORM_ELEMENT_value){
        if (!strncmp($_FORM_ELEMENT_name,'submit_',7)){
            $_FORM_ELEMENT_submit_name=explode('_',$_FORM_ELEMENT_name);
            $_FORM_name=$_FORM_ELEMENT_submit_name[1];
        }
    }
//
#   fetch script
    if(empty($_POST['load-script'])){
        $_SITE_notices[] = '<code><b>load-script</b></code> in <code><b>'.$_FORM_name.'</b></code> is empty.';
    }else{
        $_FORM_SCRIPT=$_POST['load-script'].'.script.php';  //  script to search for.
        if(file_exists(dir_scripts.$_FORM_SCRIPT)){  //  check locally first.
            include dir_scripts.$_FORM_SCRIPT;  //  include script from local folder - if found.
        }else{  //  script was not found locally.
            if($_SITE_FRAMEWORK){
                if(file_exists(ROOT_FRAMEWORK.dir_scripts.$_FORM_SCRIPT)){  //  check framework.
                    include ROOT_FRAMEWORK.dir_scripts.$_FORM_SCRIPT;  //  include script from framework - if found.
                }else{  //  script was not found in either directory; quit searching and throw error.
                    $_SITE_notices[] = 'Could not locate <code><b>'.$_FORM_SCRIPT.'</b></code> in either <code><small>&lt;ROOT&gt;</small><b>/'.dir_scripts.'</b></code> or <code><small>&lt;FRAMEWORK&gt;</small><b>/'.dir_scripts.'</b></code>';
                }
            }else{  //  framework is not activated; quit searching and throw error.
                $_SITE_notices[] = 'Could not locate <code><b>'.$_FORM_SCRIPT.'</b></code> in <code><small>&lt;ROOT&gt;</small><b>/'.dir_scripts.'</b></code>';
            }
        }
    }
//

My idea was to eliminate the need for the hidden load-script element, and just use the form action value to determen which script to load. But that might not be possible?

Answer 1

The action defines the url of the script to be called. Therefore You can see all action's details in some $_SERVER variables - maybe $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] and $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] will be useful for You.

Answer 2

No, by its very definition submitting a form only serializes all the values of the form in question and sends those to the server by the defined method . In PHP you can check exactly what is in a postback with:

var_dump($_POST);     // assuming POST method

No other data from your HTML is returned whatsoever.

Relevant section in the HTML5 standards to be found here , specifically the form data set construction logic .