proposal: net/http: Make parsePostForm public

[mitar]

Currently, parsePostForm is private. It is called only from ParseForm and one cannot call manually. This means that if one wants to call it on a non-standard HTTP method (not POST, PUT, PATCH) you have to temporary change method, then call ParseForm and then return it back. Or if you want to parse just post form and ignore any query string parameters. Currently you cannot ignore string parameters (you have to set RawQueryString to "" currently). In my case, I want to parse query string and post form separately because I want o log parsed query string but not post form (the latter might have sensitive data).

I think code could be something like:

func (r *Request) ParsePostForm() error {
	var err error
	if r.PostForm == nil {
		r.PostForm, err = parsePostForm(r)
		if r.PostForm == nil {
			r.PostForm = make(url.Values)
		}
	}
	return err
}

func (r *Request) ParseForm() error {
	var err error
	if r.PostForm == nil {
		if r.Method == "POST" || r.Method == "PUT" || r.Method == "PATCH" {
			err = r.ParsePostForm()
		}
		if r.PostForm == nil {
			r.PostForm = make(url.Values)
		}
	}
	...
}

[seankhliao]

Given what it does, why wouldn't you use url.ParseQuery directly?

[mitar]

parsePostForm parses application/x-www-form-urlencoded body, so it has a bit more logic than just calling url.ParseQuery.

[seankhliao]

It only handles application/x-www-form-urlencoded, not multipart/form-data, and all it does is pretty much:

b, _ := io.ReadAll(r.Body)
v, _ := url.ParseQuery(string(b))

[mitar]

And sets limiter if it is not already set, etc. I understand I can make it myself. But why not make it public?