HTTP POST parameters not detected when using jQuery $.ajax

[holtkamp]

Context
Currently, HTTP POST request parameters are detected when the ContentType of the HTTP Request equals either application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data. After this "detection", they can be access using $request->getParsedBody().

When using jQuery $.ajax to dispatch an HTTP POST request, the default ContentType of the HTTP Request is application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8, which is valid syntax for this header.

Problem
When using jQuery $.ajax to dispatch an HTTP POST request, the current approach does not properly detect this as being a HTTP POST request and $request->getParsedBody() remains empty, while $request->getBody() contains content like parameter1=value1&parameter2=value2&parameterN=valueN.

Workaround
Currently the following workarounds can be considered:

• use ZendExpressive Body Parsing Middleware which does properly detect the HTTP POST request when the ContentType is application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8, but this requires the complete set of Zend-Expressive Middleware helpers to be installed.
• explicitly set the $.ajax ContentType to application/x-www-form-urlencoded

Possible solution
Maybe the current exact match for application/x-www-form-urlencoded can be loosened a bit? At least this is how the FormUrlEncodedStrategy of the BodyParsingMiddleware does it

A more robust / future proof approach might be to adopt a similar "strategy" mechanism as the BodyParsingMiddleware, which also has a strategy for detecting JSON payloads, also see https://github.com/zendframework/zend-expressive-helpers/tree/master/src/BodyParams

[holtkamp]

Wow, that is quick! Works great, thanks a bunch! 🎉