Help with $_POST vs $this->data

Please help my, I'm tearing my hair out here it's been literally HOURS trying to get this to work. I have another form on another site where it works perfectly.

I have a form where someone needs to upload 1 or 2 photos - not 0. I have two separate file upload fields, "certificatesRSA" and "certificatesWhiteCard".

I can perform a check to make sure at least one image has been attached:

$hasNoRSA = empty($this->data("certificatesRSA", ""));
$hasNoWC = empty($this->data("certificatesWhiteCard", ""));

//Return true if both RSA and WC are empty
return ($hasNoRSA && $hasNoWC);

It's messy but it's what I got working after a lot of troubleshooting.

NOW: since I'm using a TCPDF action, if the person only uploads one image then the other one needs to be replaced with a placeholder image so that TCPDF doesn't fail.

if(empty ($this->data("certificatesRSA", "")))
  $_POST["certificatesRSA"] = "noCertificate.png";

if (empty($this->data("certificatesWhiteCard", "")))
{
     $_POST["certificatesWhiteCard"] = "noCertificate.png";
}

This same sort of thing works 100% on another site - I can get and set the value of the field in question using $_POST but I CANNOT FUC*&^ING GET IT TO WORK on this site! when I try to

echo $_POST[field name]

even the populated field I get NOTHING, even though the debug action shows there's something there.

PLEASE HELP ME I CAN'T GO TO SLEEP TIL I GET IT WORKING AND IT'S 11PM

Here's what works perfectly fine on the other site:

if(empty($_POST['photoIDAttachment']))
 $_POST['photoIDAttachment'] = "noID.png";

DEBUG ACTION:

Array
(
    ................
    [certificatesRSA] => pexels-photo.jpg
    [certificatesWhiteCard] => pexels-photo.jpg
    ................
)

var_dump($_POST)

Array
(
    ................
    [certificatesRSA] => 
    [certificatesWhiteCard] => 
    ................
)

Hi healyhatman,

ChronoForms copies the contents of $_POST into $this->data when the form is submitted before any actions run so changing the $_POST values after that will not change the data that CF is using. If you use the equivalent $this->data entries it should be OK.

Bob

Thanks for that, I didn't see that anywhere in the guides.