POSTing XML via HTML Forms

I am developing a web and want to make it so that the user can create some stuff POSTing XML data. For that purpose there is a <textarea> where the user can write (copy/paste) XML a开发者_StackOverflow中文版nd submit it. The problem is that I am losing data: characters such as <, >, and I think others too, get lost.

Maybe it is a framework problem, not sure, I am using Elgg and receiving the data with get_input().

UPDATE1: some code answering the comment:

<form method="POST" action="http://for.bar/slash" enctype="text/xml">
<input name="add" type="submit" value="Create"  />
</form> 

to receive the data I use elgg get_input()

$data = get_input('data');

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If i where to make a wild guess I'd say that there is some kind of auto-magical xss protection being used by get_input(). You could try doing a print_r($_POST); or perhaps elgg is "sanitizing" all of $_POST as well. In this case you may have to base64 encode the data with JavaScript before submitting the request.

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According to MDN, the only standard values that should be used in form's enctype attribute are following:

• application/x-www-form-urlencoded
• multipart/form-data
• text/plain

That being said, you can run into unpredictable situations having it to have value application/xml.

Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/form#attr-enctype