php: processing raw Post / Get Values

I just added a jquery plugin to call head requests, but because you are not doing a get or post request php won’t convert the values that are sent back to their form.
To get around this we have to use the php://input stream ( is that the right word?) which is handy for a lot of things.

$data = file_get_contents("php://input");
$lines = explode("&",$data);
foreach($lines as $line) {
    list($key,$value) = explode("=",$line,2);
    $_REQUEST[$key] = $value;
}

basically this grabs the data from the php://input and then splits it up into it’s component parts and then stores that within the $_REQUEST superglobal array.
Why $_REQUEST well we’re calling a head request and not a post or get request, so where else should it go.

The php://input is handy when doing stuff like xmlRPC or jsonRPC etc ..

Hopefully this will benefit someone out there

<edit>
Thanks to Mortal of #php on OFTC (irc) for pointing out the unlimited explode