PHP Global Variables - Superglobal Variables
Many of the predefined variables in PHP are "superglobal", meaning they are available throughout the entire scope of a script. They can be accessed within a function or method without executing global $variable;.
These superglobal variables are:
$GLOBALS
$_SERVER
$_REQUEST
$_POST
$_GET
$_FILES
$_ENV
$_COOKIE
$_SESSION
This section will introduce Some superglobal variables, and other superglobal variables will be explained in later chapters.
$GLOBALS — References all variables available in the global scope
$GLOBALS This global variable is used to access global variables from anywhere in a PHP script (either from a function or method).
PHP stores all global variables in an array called $GLOBALS[index]. The name of the variable is the key of the array.
The following example shows how to use the super global variable $GLOBALS:
Example
Running Example
In the above example, since z is a variable in the $GLOBALS array, it can also be accessed outside the function .
PHP $_SERVER
$_SERVER This superglobal variable holds information about headers, paths and script locations.
The following example shows how to use some elements in $_SERVER:
Example
"; echo $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']; echo "
"; echo $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']; echo "
"; echo $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']; echo "
"; echo $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']; echo "
"; echo $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']; ?>
Running Example
The following table lists the most important elements you can access in $_SERVER:
Elements/Code Description
$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] returns the file name of the currently executing script.
$_SERVER['GATEWAY_INTERFACE'] returns the version of the CGI specification used by the server.
$_SERVER['SERVER_ADDR'] returns the IP address of the server where the script is currently running.
$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] returns the host name of the server where the script is currently running (such as www.w3school.com.cn).
$_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'] returns the server identification string (such as Apache/2.2.24).
$_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] Returns the name and version of the communication protocol used when the page was requested (for example, "HTTP/1.0").
$_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] returns the request method used to access the page (such as POST).
$_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME'] returns the timestamp when the request started (e.g. 1577687494).
$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] returns the query string, if this page is accessed through the query string.
$_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'] returns the request headers from the current request.
$_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET'] returns the Accept_Charset header from the current request (e.g. utf-8, ISO-8859-1)
$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] returns the Host header from the current request.
$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] Returns the full URL of the current page (not reliable as not supported by all user agents).
$_SERVER['HTTPS'] Whether to query the script through the secure HTTP protocol.
$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] Returns the IP address of the user browsing the current page.
$_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'] returns the host name of the user browsing the current page.
$_SERVER['REMOTE_PORT'] Returns the port number used on the user's machine to connect to the web server.
$_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] returns the absolute path of the currently executing script.
$_SERVER['SERVER_ADMIN'] This value specifies the SERVER_ADMIN parameter in the Apache server configuration file.
$_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] Port used by the web server. The default value is "80".
$_SERVER['SERVER_SIGNATURE'] returns the server version and virtual host name.
$_SERVER['PATH_TRANSLATED'] The base path of the file system (not the document root directory) where the current script is located.
$_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] returns the path of the current script.
$_SERVER['SCRIPT_URI'] returns the URI of the current page.
PHP $_REQUEST
PHP $_REQUEST is used to collect data submitted by HTML forms.
The example below shows a form with input fields and a submit button. When a user submits form data by clicking the submit button, the form data is sent to the script file specified in the action attribute of the