500 Internal Server Error in POSTMAN for PHP API

What to expect. A 500 Internal Server Error is an HTTP status code that indicates that the server encountered an unexpected error while processing the request. Note: Reach out to the API service and check the status page of the API Service and see if their systems are operational.

500 Internal Server Error in POSTMAN for PHP API

My code is throwing a 500 Internal Server Error because of this line:

php

header($_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']. '500 Internal Server Error')

It should be:

php

header($_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] . ' 500 Internal Server Error');

There needs to be a space after the protocol version (e.g., "HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error"), otherwise, it can cause issues.

Other Potential Issues:

1. Incorrect Content-Type Check

• Some clients send Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8, which doesn't strictly match "application/json". Use stripos() instead:
• if (stripos($incommingContentType, 'application/json') === false) { header($_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] . ' 415 Unsupported Media Type'); echo json_encode(["error" => "Content-Type must be application/json"]); exit(); }

1. Error Handling for json_decode()

• If json_decode() fails (e.g., malformed JSON), it returns null. Add error checking:
• php
• if ($decoded === null && json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) { header($_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] . ' 400 Bad Request'); echo json_encode(["error" => "Invalid JSON input"]); exit(); }

Fixed Code

error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE);

/*-------- Start Code to Accept JSON post content --------------*/
header('Content-Type: application/json');
$incomingContentType = $_SERVER['CONTENT_TYPE'] ?? '';
if (stripos($incomingContentType, 'application/json') === false) {
    header($_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] . ' 415 Unsupported Media Type');
    echo json_encode(["error" => "Content-Type must be application/json"]);
    exit();
}
$content = trim(file_get_contents("php://input"));
$decoded = json_decode($content, true);
if ($decoded === null && json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) {
    header($_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] . ' 400 Bad Request');
    echo json_encode(["error" => "Invalid JSON input"]);
    exit();
}
// Process JSON normally
echo json_encode(["success" => "JSON received successfully"]);

Improvements:

✔ Fixed 500 error formatting
✔ Used stripos() to handle Content-Type variations
✔ Added JSON validation
✔ Provided descriptive error messages

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