How to post SOAP Request from PHP

user_52745 0
Viewed 182842

Anyone know how can I post a SOAP Request from PHP?

web-services soap php
7 Answers

In my experience, it's not quite that simple. The built-in PHP SOAP client didn't work with the .NET-based SOAP server we had to use. It complained about an invalid schema definition. Even though .NET client worked with that server just fine. By the way, let me claim that SOAP interoperability is a myth.

The next step was NuSOAP. This worked for quite a while. By the way, for God's sake, don't forget to cache WSDL! But even with WSDL cached users complained the damn thing is slow.

Then, we decided to go bare HTTP, assembling the requests and reading the responses with SimpleXMLElemnt, like this:

$request_info = array();

$full_response = @http_post_data(
    'http://example.com/OTA_WS.asmx',
    $REQUEST_BODY,
    array(
        'headers' => array(
            'Content-Type' => 'text/xml; charset=UTF-8',
            'SOAPAction'   => 'HotelAvail',
        ),
        'timeout' => 60,

    ),
    $request_info
);

$response_xml = new SimpleXMLElement(strstr($full_response, '<?xml'));

foreach ($response_xml->xpath('//@HotelName') as $HotelName) {
    echo strval($HotelName) . "\n";
}

Note that in PHP 5.2 you'll need pecl_http, as far as (surprise-surpise!) there's no HTTP client built in.

Going to bare HTTP gained us over 30% in SOAP request times. And from then on we redirect all the performance complains to the server guys.

In the end, I'd recommend this latter approach, and not because of the performance. I think that, in general, in a dynamic language like PHP there's no benefit from all that WSDL/type-control. You don't need a fancy library to read and write XML, with all that stubs generation and dynamic proxies. Your language is already dynamic, and SimpleXMLElement works just fine, and is so easy to use. Also, you'll have less code, which is always good.

Ivan_Krechetov_64300

You might want to look here and here.

A Little code example from the first link:

<?php
// include the SOAP classes
require_once('nusoap.php');
// define parameter array (ISBN number)
$param = array('isbn'=>'0385503954');
// define path to server application
$serverpath ='http://services.xmethods.net:80/soap/servlet/rpcrouter';
//define method namespace
$namespace="urn:xmethods-BNPriceCheck";
// create client object
$client = new soapclient($serverpath);
// make the call
$price = $client->call('getPrice',$param,$namespace);
// if a fault occurred, output error info
if (isset($fault)) {
        print "Error: ". $fault;
        }
else if ($price == -1) {
        print "The book is not in the database.";
} else {
        // otherwise output the result
        print "The price of book number ". $param[isbn] ." is $". $price;
        }
// kill object
unset($client);
?>
Filip_Ekberg_391060

If the XML have identities with same name in different levels there is a solution. You don´t have to ever submit a raw XML (this PHP SOAP object don´t allows send a RAW XML), so you have to always translate your XML to a array, like the example below:

$originalXML = "
<xml>
  <firstClient>
      <name>someone</name>
      <adress>R. 1001</adress>
  </firstClient>
  <secondClient>
      <name>another one</name>
      <adress></adress>
  </secondClient>
</xml>"

//Translate the XML above in a array, like PHP SOAP function requires
$myParams = array('firstClient' => array('name' => 'someone',
                                  'adress' => 'R. 1001'),
            'secondClient' => array('name' => 'another one',
                                  'adress' => ''));

$webService = new SoapClient($someURL);
$result = $webService->someWebServiceFunction($myParams);

or 

$soapUrl = "http://privpakservices.schenker.nu/package/package_1.3/packageservices.asmx?op=SearchCollectionPoint";

$xml_post_string = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><soap12:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap12="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"><soap12:Body><SearchCollectionPoint xmlns="http://privpakservices.schenker.nu/"><customerID>XXX</customerID><key>XXXXXX-XXXXXX</key><serviceID></serviceID><paramID>0</paramID><address>RiksvŠgen 5</address><postcode>59018</postcode><city>Mantorp</city><maxhits>10</maxhits></SearchCollectionPoint></soap12:Body></soap12:Envelope>';

$headers = array(
"POST /package/package_1.3/packageservices.asmx HTTP/1.1",
"Host: privpakservices.schenker.nu",
"Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8",
"Content-Length: ".strlen($xml_post_string)
); 

$url = $soapUrl;

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $xml_post_string);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$response = curl_exec($ch); 
curl_close($ch);

$response1 = str_replace("<soap:Body>","",$response);
$response2 = str_replace("</soap:Body>","",$response1);

$parser = simplexml_load_string($response2);
user_103581140
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