Form Data Not Being Sent From View To Controller - forms

Question

So I'm trying to send a few pieces of data from a form in cake's form builder but for some reason none of the data being submitted is showing up when I print out $this->data or $this->request->data
I've tried creating the form myself and using cake's Form Builder and I need to send this data via POST. The data shows up if I send it as a GET parameter.
view.ctp
echo $this->Form->create(null, array('action' => 'downloadbgc', 'type' => 'get'));
echo $this->Form->input('userId', ['type' => 'text' , 'id' => 'userId', 'name' => 'userId', 'value' => $user->id]);
echo $this->Form->input('product_id', ['type' => 'hidden' , 'id' => 'product_id', 'name' => 'product_id', 'value' => $user->product_id]);
echo $this->Form->submit('Download PDF', array('class' => 'btn btn-icon btn-primary', 'title' => 'Download'));
echo $this->Form->end();
controller.php
...
public function downloadbgc() {
$this->autoRender = false;
print_r("Data: ");
print_r($this->data); die();
}
}
...
When printing this out I get Data: Array() instead of Array('userId' => X, 'product_id' => Y) And I'm positive that these values aren't null since they print to the console.

Answer 1

Use the FormHelper's create() in a correct way:
echo $this->Form->create(false, ['url' => 'downloadbgc']);
echo $this->Form->input('userId', ['type' => 'text' , 'id' => 'userId', 'name' => 'userId', 'value' => 123]);
echo $this->Form->input('product_id', ['type' => 'hidden' , 'id' => 'product_id', 'name' => 'product_id', 'value' => 4456]);
echo $this->Form->submit('Download PDF', array('class' => 'btn btn-icon btn-primary', 'title' => 'Download'));
echo $this->Form->end();
Like the Docs point out the create() method can take the Model as first parameter or false, if you want to access the data without Model. Also use the url option as action is deprecated
In your Controller you can then use $this->request->data to access your data.