[laravel-5] Laravel 5: Retrieve JSON array from $request

I'm a Laravel newbie and I'm converting a php/jquery app to Laravel. The original code used a JSON array with an ajax POST, which was retrieved like this:

$json = file_get_contents('php://input');
$data = json_decode($json,true);

I'm doing much the same thing on the POST side, but I don't see any data coming through in my Laravel $request collection. Is there something special that I need to do to retrieve JSON data structured like this:

[
    { "name": "John", "location": "Boston" }, 
    { "name": "Dave", "location": "Lancaster" }
]

Here is my jQuery ajax POST code (with hard coded data)

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "/people",
    data: '[{ "name": "John", "location": "Boston" }, { "name": "Dave", "location": "Lancaster" }]',
    dataType: "json",
    success:function(data) {
        $('#save_message').html(data.message);
    } 
});

Here is the code in my Controller that receives the POST

public function store(Request $request)
{
    dd($request->all());
}

But all I get is:

[]

Any ideas on how I can retreive my data?

You can use getContent() method on Request object.

$request->getContent() //json as a string.

 $postbody='';
 // Check for presence of a body in the request
 if (count($request->json()->all())) {
     $postbody = $request->json()->all();
 }

This is how it's done in laravel 5.2 now.

My jQuery ajax settings:

        $.ajax({
        headers: {'X-CSRF-TOKEN': $('meta[name="csrf-token"]').attr('content')},
        url: url,
        dataType: "json",
        type: "post",
        data: params,
        success: function (resp){
            ....
        },
        error: responseFunc
    });

And now i am able to get the request via $request->all() in Laravel

dataType: "json"

is the important part in the ajax request to handle the response as an json object and not string.

Just a mention with jQuery v3.2.1 and Laravel 5.6.

Case 1: The JS object posted directly, like:

$.post("url", {name:'John'}, function( data ) {
});

Corresponding Laravel PHP code should be:

parse_str($request->getContent(),$data); //JSON will be parsed to object $data

Case 2: The JSON string posted, like:

$.post("url", JSON.stringify({name:'John'}), function( data ) {
});

Corresponding Laravel PHP code should be:

$data = json_decode($request->getContent(), true);

As of Laravel 5.2+, you can fetch it directly with $request->input('item') as well.

Retrieving JSON Input Values

When sending JSON requests to your application, you may access the JSON data via the input method as long as the Content-Type header of the request is properly set to application/json. You may even use "dot" syntax to dig deeper into JSON arrays:

$name = $request->input('user.name');

https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/requests

As noted above, the content-type header must be set to application/json so the jQuery ajax call would need to include contentType: "application/json",

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "/people",
    data: '[{ "name": "John", "location": "Boston" }, { "name": "Dave", "location": "Lancaster" }]',
    dataType: "json",
    contentType: "application/json",
    success:function(data) {
        $('#save_message').html(data.message);
    } 
});

By fixing the AJAX call, $request->all() should work.