With PHP, you often want to process input from forms.  Sometimes GET forms are appropriate, sometimes POST.  But which of those you use is a decision for the input side; when you’re processing the form information, do you really care if it’s from GET or POST?  I’ve found that, while I sometimes want to have the same page accept either GET or POST, I never care which it is.  (If it matters, I include some other parameter to show which action the user is performing.)

Therefore, it would be nice if there were a way to treat the input as “just an array” without caring if it’s GET or POST.  Fortunately, there is a way, a simple one at that.

$getpost = array_merge((array) $_GET, (array) $_POST);

This will create an array, $getpost, that contains every key and value from both $_GET and $_POST.  It will work even if the arrays are null (assuming you’re running a recent version of PHP, that is, PHP 5).  Now you can use $getpost to access your submitted form elements without worrying which type of request it was.  There are just a couple of caveats.

1. If your keys are numeric, they may get renumbered.  I don’t know if it’s even possible to have form elements with numeric names (and even if it’s possible, it’s not a good idea).
2. If both $_GET and $_POST each have a key with the same name, the latter ($_POST in this case) will be used and the former will be forgotten.  (But is it even possible to have both $_GET and $_POST in one request?)