SOAP | Dimuthu's Blog

January 5th, 2009Article Introducing PHP Data Services

Now you can view the article I wrote titling “Introduction to PHP Data Services“. There I explain how you can design and implement Data Services in PHP using WSF/PHP Data Services Library.

This article covers,

Designing your Data Service API.
Writing the Data Service.
Deploying and Testing Data Service.
Make the Data Service available in both SOAP and RESTful form.
Use of WS-* features in your Data Service.

If you are thinking of adapting SOA in to your database backed PHP applications, this article will be a good starting point.

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DataServices, REST, RESTful, SOA, SQL, Tutorial/Guide, WSDL, database, design, php, web services, wsf/php, wso2, xml No Comments »

December 11th, 2008Calling Simple Web Services From Javascript

If you are a web developer, you may have found many occasions you have to create simple mashups for your web site. There you call web services or data services to fill the content of the web page. Most of the time we call web services from a server side script, since there are many server side technologies like Java, PHP, .NET support web services.

But sometime it is in vain that you call your server scripts for a simple web service request. In fact You can use the famous XMLHttpRequest object to do the same thing from the client side itself. But you may need to prepare the complete SOAP envelope (Yea with SOAP headers, if required) in your hand to send it through XMLHttpRequest.

Another option is to use the WSRequest script (http://mooshup.com/js/wso2/WSRequest.js). We normally use this script in the WSO2 Mashup Server to call the mashups designed in the serverside using stub. (The server side mashup is also mostly written in Javascript). We can use this script stand alone to call remote web services as well.

It introduce you the WSRequest class. It is exactly similar to the famous XMLHttpRequest class we used in AJAX. In stead of plain message over HTTP like in the case of XMLHttpRequest, WSRequest send and receive messages in SOAP form. Here is its API in brief.

var WSRequest = function() {
    //----------------------------------------------------
    // the public properties - equivalent to XMLHTTPRequest
    //-----------------------------------------------------
    this.readyState = 0;
    this.responseText = null;
    this.responseXML = null;
    this.error = null;  // equivalent to httpErrorCode
    this.onreadystatechange = null;
    this.proxyAddress = null;
    this.proxyEngagedCallback = null
}

//----------------------------------------------------
// the public operations - equivalent to XMLHTTPRequest
//-----------------------------------------------------

/**
 * @description Prepare a Web Service Request .
 * @method open
 * @param {hash} options,
 *   possible options: possible values for the option
 *            useSOAP : false/true/1.1/1.2
 *            useWSA : true/false/1.0/submission
 *            useWSS : true/false (only for usernametoken & timestamp)
 *
 * @param {string} URL
 * @param {boolean} asyncFlag
 * @param {string} username
 * @param {string} password
 */
WSRequest.prototype.open = function(options, URL, asnycFlag, username, password) {.. }

/**
 * @description Send the payload to the Web Service.
 * @method send
 * @param {dom} response xml payload
 */
WSRequest.prototype.send = function(payload) {.. }

I wrote a simple javascript/html demo which calls the data service that I published for my blog. This service is written using WSF/PHP Data Services. Check the demo and client, service sources from the following links.

AJAX Tag Search

Demo | WSDL | Client | Service

Demonstrates how you use SOAP Data Services using WSRequest object to retrieve the data asynchronously from javascript

There You can see, how easy to write an AJAX like page for call web services using the WSRequest javascript class.

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SOA, Tutorial/Guide, javascript, mashup server, php, web services 2 Comments »

October 17th, 2008DEMO on a SOAP and REST Client with PHP

Last week I wrote a how to on Writing a SOAP and REST Service with PHP. It shows how to write a single script that enables the SOAP and REST web services interfaces using WSF/PHP. Today I’m going to show you how you can use WSF/PHP to write clients in both SOAP and REST form.

For that I use the Amazon Client Demo hosted in the PHP Web Services Demo Site. With this demo you can do shopping with Amazon using their web services API. It uses a php library (AmazonClient.php) that allows us to connect Amazon using SOAP or REST libraries.

You can see in the library code It is using different values for “useSOAP” argument depending on what form of messaging we like to use. Amazon SOAP service uses the SOAP 1.1 and the REST service uses the “GET” HTTP method for messaging. We can configure these details as mentioned in the following table.

REST	SOAP
array( "to"=>self::AMAZON_REST_ENDPOINT, "HTTPMethod"=>"GET", "useSOAP" => FALSE)	array( "to"=>self::AMAZON_SOAP_ENDPOINT, "useSOAP" => "1.1", "action" => "http://soap.amazon.com")

Since Amazon requires different request messages for SOAP and REST services, we have to create them separately depending on the request type. But the response returns by the service is same in both cases so we can handle it using the same code.

Here is how ItemLookup operation of the Amazon service is written within the above mentioned constrains.

    /**
     * ItemLookup
     * @param $ASIN Amaxon Item Id
     * @return associate array consist of the response parameters
     */
    public function ItemLookup($ASIN)
    {

        if($this->is_soap)
        {
             $req_payload = <<<XML
                <ItemLookup xmlns="http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2007-10-29">
                    <SubscriptionId>{$this->amazon_key}</SubscriptionId>
                    <ResponseGroup>Medium</ResponseGroup>
                    <Request>
                        <ItemId>{$ASIN}</ItemId>
                        <ReviewPage>1</ReviewPage>
                    </Request>
                </ItemLookup>
XML;
        }
        else
        {
             $req_payload = <<<XML
                <ItemLookup xmlns="http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2007-10-29">
                    <SubscriptionId>{$this->amazon_key}</SubscriptionId>
                    <Service>AWSECommerceService</Service>
                    <ResponseGroup>Large</ResponseGroup>
                    <Operation>ItemLookup</Operation>
                    <ItemId>{$ASIN}</ItemId>
                    <ReviewPage>1</ReviewPage>
                </ItemLookup>
XML;
        }

        $ret_message = $this->request($req_payload);

        $simplexml = new SimpleXMLElement($ret_message->str);

        $res = $simplexml;

        return $res;
    }

Dimuthu’s Blog

January 5th, 2009Article Introducing PHP Data Services

December 11th, 2008Calling Simple Web Services From Javascript

October 17th, 2008DEMO on a SOAP and REST Client with PHP