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I'm trying to set up Tropo's WebAPI with a Drupal site, and I thought I'd just create a hook_menu() callback for example.com/tropo, then use the hook_menu callback I just created to consume the API call from Tropo (which contains a simple JSON array of data), then respond.

I can do the response part pretty easily... build the data, drupal_json_output() and exit (that just returns the JSON basically).

The part I'm having trouble with is getting the data that is sent to the /tropo menu callback... I can't access any data by using either of the following:

$json = file_get_contents("php://input"); // returns NULL

(below uses the inputstream module:)

$json = file_get_contents("drupal://input"); // also returns NULL

I checked what some other modules do, and it looks like they use hook_init to grab the JSON. Is this the preferred method? I'd love to be able to do it in hook_menu and use my own path and such...

Alternatively, would I be better off writing my own PHP script and running outside of Drupal, just doing a bootstrap for the database if I need to?

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  • Which data would the menu callback get, and what is passing those data to the menu callback (an external server, or something else)? Can you control the data format?
    – apaderno ♦
    Jun 6, 2011 at 20:14
  • From: php.net/manual/en/wrappers.php.php: "php://input allows you to read raw data from the request body. In case of POST requests, it preferrable to $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA as it does not depend on special php.ini directives. Moreover, for those cases where $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA is not populated by default, it is a potentially less memory intensive alternative to activating always_populate_raw_post_data. php://input is not available with enctype="multipart/form-data"." Is that maybe relevant to you?
    – Berdir
    Jun 6, 2011 at 21:22
  • I have tried php://input, but that seems to get nothing. When I'm using inputstream, drupal://input returns '1' :(
    – geerlingguy
    Jun 7, 2011 at 3:04
  • @kiamlaluno - I'm trying to get the data posted to the URL /tropo from the Tropo servers; they submit some JSON containing a caller's phone number, and I need to respond to it. But I can't get at the JSON, so I can't get at the phone number :(
    – geerlingguy
    Jun 7, 2011 at 3:05

2 Answers 2

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Well, it turns out I was getting the data, but I forgot to decode it...

In my hook_menu callback:

$received = file_get_contents("drupal://input"); // Use inputstream module.
$received = json_decode($received, TRUE);

Then I can play around as much as I'd like with the $received value.

Additionally, the inputstream module is invaluable in letting me get to the input stream more than once (if you try using php://input more than once, the second time, and those following, will return NULL).

As an additional note, I just noticed today a new module that might be an even simpler way of handling this: Content as JSON

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  • 4
    Two years later, and my Google searches bring me back full-circle.
    – geerlingguy
    Aug 10, 2013 at 4:25
  • How do you handle authentication of who is making the request (sending the JSON) in this situation?
    – sheldonkreger
    Dec 23, 2014 at 23:07
  • Here is a bit more explanation of the solution presented above. wunderkraut.com/blog/…
    – sheldonkreger
    Dec 23, 2014 at 23:43
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The REST Server that is part of the Services module does this automatically for JSON as well as for other formats: http://drupal.org/project/services

It also supports Inputstream (Inputstream was built to handle both OAuth verification and Services decoding of the same stream).

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