Explain:"$fieldname = $_REQUEST['fieldname']"

[dogbot]

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New to Programming

Newer to PHP

Bad at formulating coherent questions.....so here it goes....

 

Could someone explain

$fieldname = $_REQUEST['fieldname']

 

I understand "$_REQUEST An associative array that by default contains the contents of $_GET, $_POST and $_COOKIE"

 

I also understand you call the member of an array like so: 

<?php
$arr = array("foo" => "bar", 12 => true);

echo $arr["foo"]; // bar
echo $arr[12];    // 1
?>

 

So I would expect that if someone wants to use something from the $_REQUEST Array they would use:

$fieldname = $_REQUEST['$_GET']

So I do not understand why "$fieldname" is inside the brackets.I suspect they might be setting this up to use $fieldname instead of $_REQUEST maybe...but why, that would be redundant? so I suspect I suspect wrong....

[trq]

$_REQUEST is an alternative to $_GET, $_POST and $_COOKIE, it doesn't contain $_GET, $_POST and $_COOKIE as keys, but rather the data contained within $_GET, $_POST and $_COOKIE merged into a new array called $_REQUEST.