POST becomes GET after htaccess directives

Question

I am hiding the php file extention using the below directives in Apache htaccess file

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L,NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.php [L]

I have a simple html form like this

<form action="register.php" method="post">
  <input type="text" name="name">
  <input type="submit">
</form>

And in my PHP page this is how I was earlier checking whether the form has been posted

if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
/* code to process the post */
}

But since I added the htaccess directives to hide the php filename extensionthe "POST" becomes "GET" and the above code never executes. Is there a good way to handle this? I know it is the internal redirect that causes this but is there an elegant way to handle this? I don't want to use the below method for obvious reasons

if (isset($_POST['submit'])) {

Answer 1

POST doesn't become GET, it is due to your first redirect rule:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L,NC]

Which is catching a request with .php in it and redirecting to a URL without .php in it. You're looking at $_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] after it has been redirected by this rule.

To fix have it this way:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L]

i.e. don't redirect POST requests to avoid POST data getting lost.