Python Post - PHP Request

Question

I'm trying to create a php page which takes data from my python code and show them as a table.

r = requests.post('http://localhost/index.php', data={"iv":a,"ven":b,"hem":c,"card":d,"ecg":e})
print(r.text)

In above code, I post data then print it to check if everything is okay. My r.text output

<table><tr><th>IV Pump</th><th>Ventilator</th> <th>Heart Monitor</th><th>Cardiac Machine</th><th>Echocardiogram</th></tr><tr><td>off</td><td>on</td><td>off</td><td>off</td><td>off</td></tr></table> 

which seems fine because I can get a,b,c,d,e (on/off basically). However when I open my index.php I cannot see those "on"s and "off"s. I am newbie on server things, PHP, etc. My mistake is probably very dummy. Should I store post data in somewhere? My index.php:

<?php
$iv=$_REQUEST['iv'];
$ven=$_REQUEST['ven'];
$hem=$_REQUEST['hem'];
$card=$_REQUEST['card'];
$ecg=$_REQUEST['ecg'];

echo '<table>';
echo  '<tr>';
echo    '<th>IV Pump</th>';
echo    '<th>Ventilator</th> ';
echo    '<th>Heart Monitor</th>';
echo    '<th>Cardiac Machine</th>';
echo    '<th>Echocardiogram</th>';
echo  '</tr>';
echo  '<tr>';
echo    '<td>';
echo $iv;
echo '</td>';
echo    '<td>';
echo $ven;
echo '</td>';
echo    '<td>';
echo $hem;
echo '</td>';
echo    '<td>';
echo $card;
echo '</td>';
echo    '<td>';
echo $ecg;
echo '</td>';
echo  '</tr>';

echo '</table>';
?>

My r.text is ok, but in web page I cannot see request data, the table cells are empty. What is the difference? As I know r.text returns the page content, so index.php must be wrong, I guess it is about storing the data.

Answer 1

When you make a HTTP request to a server, that server will return the rendered webpage to that user. This means requests will get back the correct response.

However when you open a web page in a browser, you are making a new request to that server which will render the page again. Since you aren't passing the $_REQUEST['iv'] etc. values this time, the table will appear blank.

You have a few options depending on what you want to do:

Store the information in a database

You can store that information in a database. Some databases for example are SQLite3 or MySQL . I've omitted the exact database insertion/reading implementation since it differs between which database you pick.

A simple method might be:

<?php

$iv=$_REQUEST['iv'];
// insert other variables etc.

// Check if this is a POST request
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] === "POST") {
   // INSERT DATA INTO YOUR DATABASE AS APPROPRIATE
   // You can also echo back the table if you want

// Else it might be a GET request
} elseif ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] === "GET") {
   // READ DATA FROM DATABASE
   // echo table with the data from the database
}


?>

Use URL parameters

Alternatively you can use URL parameters to encode your data like so:

# In your Python code
# Notice that requests.post changed to requests.get and data changed to params
r = requests.get('http://localhost/index.php', params={"iv":a,"ven":b,"hem":c,"card":d,"ecg":e})

# You can now access this specific URL to see the populated table
# The URL will look something like http://localhost/index.php?iv=a&ven=b/
print(r.url)

Note that this requires you to visit that specific URL and doesn't work if you visit the base URL (ie https://localhost/index.php ) without the parameters.