Requests made to an application are represented in terms of [[yii\web\Request]] objects which provide information
such as request parameters, HTTP headers, cookies, etc. For a given request, you can get access to the corresponding
request object via the request
application component which is an instance
of [[yii\web\Request]], by default. In this section, we will describe how you can make use of this component in your applications.
To get request parameters, you can call [[yii\web\Request::get()|get()]] and [[yii\web\Request::post()|post()]] methods
of the request
component. They return the values of $_GET
and $_POST
, respectively. For example,
$request = Yii::$app->request;
$get = $request->get();
// equivalent to: $get = $_GET;
$id = $request->get('id');
// equivalent to: $id = isset($_GET['id']) ? $_GET['id'] : null;
$id = $request->get('id', 1);
// equivalent to: $id = isset($_GET['id']) ? $_GET['id'] : 1;
$post = $request->post();
// equivalent to: $post = $_POST;
$name = $request->post('name');
// equivalent to: $name = isset($_POST['name']) ? $_POST['name'] : null;
$name = $request->post('name', '');
// equivalent to: $name = isset($_POST['name']) ? $_POST['name'] : '';
Info: Instead of directly accessing
$_GET
and$_POST
to retrieve the request parameters, it is recommended that you get them via therequest
component as shown above. This will make writing tests easier because you can create a mock request component with faked request data.
When implementing RESTful APIs, you often need to retrieve parameters that are submitted via PUT, PATCH or other request methods. You can get these parameters by calling the [[yii\web\Request::getBodyParam()]] methods. For example,
$request = Yii::$app->request;
// returns all parameters
$params = $request->bodyParams;
// returns the parameter "id"
$param = $request->getBodyParam('id');
Info: Unlike
GET
parameters, parameters submitted viaPOST
,PUT
,PATCH
etc. are sent in the request body. Therequest
component will parse these parameters when you access them through the methods described above. You can customize the way how these parameters are parsed by configuring the [[yii\web\Request::parsers]] property.
You can get the HTTP method used by the current request via the expression Yii::$app->request->method
.
A whole set of boolean properties are also provided for you to check if the current method is of certain type.
For example,
$request = Yii::$app->request;
if ($request->isAjax) { // the request is an AJAX request }
if ($request->isGet) { // the request method is GET }
if ($request->isPost) { // the request method is POST }
if ($request->isPut) { // the request method is PUT }
The request
component provides many ways of inspecting the currently requested URL.
Assuming the URL being requested is http://example.com/admin/index.php/product?id=100
, you can get various
parts of this URL as summarized in the following:
- [[yii\web\Request::url|url]]: returns
/admin/index.php/product?id=100
, which is the URL without the host info part. - [[yii\web\Request::absoluteUrl|absoluteUrl]]: returns
http://example.com/admin/index.php/product?id=100
, which is the whole URL including the host info part. - [[yii\web\Request::hostInfo|hostInfo]]: returns
http://example.com
, which is the host info part of the URL. - [[yii\web\Request::pathInfo|pathInfo]]: returns
/product
, which is the part after the entry script and before the question mark (query string). - [[yii\web\Request::queryString|queryString]]: returns
id=100
, which is the part after the question mark. - [[yii\web\Request::baseUrl|baseUrl]]: returns
/admin
, which is the part after the host info and before the entry script name. - [[yii\web\Request::scriptUrl|scriptUrl]]: returns
/admin/index.php
, which is the URL without path info and query string. - [[yii\web\Request::serverName|serverName]]: returns
example.com
, which is the host name in the URL. - [[yii\web\Request::serverPort|serverPort]]: returns 80, which is the port used by the Web server.
You can get the HTTP header information through the [[yii\web\HeaderCollection|header collection]] returned by the [[yii\web\Request::headers]] property. For example,
// $headers is an object of yii\web\HeaderCollection
$headers = Yii::$app->request->headers;
// returns the Accept header value
$accept = $headers->get('Accept');
if ($headers->has('User-Agent')) { // there is User-Agent header }
The request
component also provides support for quickly accessing some commonly used headers, including:
- [[yii\web\Request::userAgent|userAgent]]: returns the value of the
User-Agent
header. - [[yii\web\Request::contentType|contentType]]: returns the value of the
Content-Type
header which indicates the MIME type of the data in the request body. - [[yii\web\Request::acceptableContentTypes|acceptableContentTypes]]: returns the content MIME types acceptable by users. The returned types are ordered by their quality score. Types with the highest scores will be returned first.
- [[yii\web\Request::acceptableLanguages|acceptableLanguages]]: returns the languages acceptable by users. The returned languages are ordered by their preference level. The first element represents the most preferred language.
If your application supports multiple languages and you want to display pages in the language that is the most preferred by the end user, you may use the language negotiation method [[yii\web\Request::getPreferredLanguage()]]. This method takes a list of languages supported by your application, compares them with [[yii\web\Request::acceptableLanguages|acceptableLanguages]], and returns the most appropriate language.
Tip: You may also use the [[yii\filters\ContentNegotiator|ContentNegotiator]] filter to dynamically determine what content type and language should be used in the response. The filter implements the content negotiation on top of the properties and methods described above.
You can get the host name and IP address of the client machine through [[yii\web\Request::userHost|userHost]] and [[yii\web\Request::userIP|userIP]], respectively. For example,
$userHost = Yii::$app->request->userHost;
$userIP = Yii::$app->request->userIP;