How to send complex types from PHP SoapClient to ASP.NET SOAP server?

Question

Hello I'm having problems sending arrays, structs and arrays of structs from PHP to an ASP.NET SOAP server...

Anyone have a sollution for this? I've googled for days and any sollution worked for me. Perphaps I'm forgetting something...

There are examples of my code:

$client = new SoapClient($options);

$pCriteria = new stdClass();
$pCriteria->type=1;
$pCriteria->capacity=4;

//Test 1 (fail):
$resp = $client->GetRooms(array("pCriteria"=>$pCriteria));

//Test 2 (fail):
$resp = $client->GetRooms(array("pCriteria"=>new SoapVar($pCriteria, SOAP_ENC_OBJECT, "TCriteria", "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema")));

print_r($resp);

I don't know how to code functions that require an array of TCriteria (TCriteria[], TCriteria_Array type) either... i've tried sending the raw array, a SoapVar with SOAP_ENC_ARRAY encoding and TCriteria_Array type, ... but it does not work (the SOAP server becomes unavaiable and needs to be restarted).

I've tried creating classes for the complex types too, instead of stdClass, but not working.

I don't know where's the problem. The server admins cannot help me and I haven't found any sollution over internet. I'm a bit desperate hehe.

Can you help me please? Can you provide samples of code with the three cases (array of simple data, array of struct and struct) ? Thanks!

Answer 1

I had a similar situation with a PHP Soap Client communicating with a .NET Soap Server using WSDL 2.0. Here's one thing I discovered: When passing the information to the server, you must explicitly define the variable as a SoapVar object. So in your example above, change it to:

$pCriteria->type = new SoapVar(1, XSD_INT, 'xsd:int');

Passing an array is similar, essentialy you pass an array of SoapVars:

$pCriteria->type = array(new SoapVar(1, XSD_INT, 'xsd:int'), new SoapVar(2, XSD_INT, 'xsd:int', new SoapVar(3, XSD_INT, 'xsd:int'));`enter code here`

Also, you can use several built-in functions of the SoapClient to get some additional feedback on possible errors.

$client->__getLastRequest() //To display the XML that you sent to the server
$client->__getLastResponse() //to display the XML that is sent in response to your request

If you can get a copy of the expected WSDL format you can use the response from the above commands to determine what is going wrong. Usually you can access this from the URL that you pass to the SoapClient. So, for example, if the WSDL services URL is http://example.com/webservices/wvrgroupservice.asmx?WSDL, enter http://example.com/webservices/wvrgroupservice.asmx to view the functions and expected XML from that server.