Build correct SOAP Request Header (PHP) - php

Question

I have to do requets to a SOAP API with PHP and I need the following SOAP-Header structure:
<soapenv:Header>
<ver:authentication>
<pw>xxx</pw>
<user>xxx</user>
</ver:authentication>
</soapenv:Header>
How can I build this header?
I tried
$auth = [
"ver:authentication" => [
"pw" => $this->pw,
"user" => $this->user
]
];
$options = [];
$options["trace"] = TRUE;
$options["cache_wsdl"] = WSDL_CACHE_NONE;
$options["compression"] = SOAP_COMPRESSION_ACCEPT | SOAP_COMPRESSION_GZIP;
$client = new SoapClient("www.my-url.com/wsdl", $options);
$header = new SoapHeader("www.my-url.com", "authentication", $auth, false);
$client->__setSoapHeaders($header);
but it does not work. The respons is "failure" which I get, when the header structure is incorrect...
please help

Answer 1

the solution could be object driven. In the following code an example is given. Please keep in mind, that the following code is not testet.
class Authentication
{
protected $user;
protected $pw;
public function getUser() : ?string
{
return $this->user;
}
public function setUser(string $user) : Authentication
{
$this->user = $user;
return $this;
}
public function getPw() : string
{
return $this->pw;
}
public function setPw(string $pw) : Authentication
{
$this->pw = $pw;
return $this;
}
}
The above shown class is a simple entity, which contains two properties $user fpr the username and $pw for the password. Further it contains the getter and setter functions for retrieving or setting the values for the two properties.
For the next step just fill the class with data and store it in a SoapVar object.
$authentication = (new Authentication())
->setUser('Username')
->setPw('YourEncodedPassword');
$soapEncodedObject = new \SoapVar(
$authentication,
SOAP_ENC_OBJECT,
null,
null,
'authentication',
'http://www.example.com/namespace'
);
As you can see above, your authentication class will be stored as soap var object. It is encoded as soap object. The only thing you have to do is setting the namespace for this object. In your given example it is ver:. With this namespace prefix somewhere in your wsdl file a namespace is noted. You have to find out this namespace url and just replace the example url http://www.example.com/namespace with the right url noted in your wsdl.
The next step is setting this as soap header. That 's quite simple.
try {
$client = new SoapClient('http://www.example.com/?wsdl', [
'trace' => true,
'exception' => true,
'cache_wsdl' => WSDL_CACHE_NONE,
'compression' => SOAP_COMPRESSION_ACCEPT | SOAP_COMPRESSION_GZIP,
]);
// set the soap header
$header = new SoapHeader('http://www.example.com/namespace', 'authentication', $authentication, false);
$client->setSoapHeaders($header);
// send the request
$result = $client->someWsdlFunction($params);
} catch (SoapFault $e) {
echo "<pre>";
var_dump($e);
echo "</pre>";
if ($client) {
echo "<pre>";
var_dump($client->__getLastRequest());
echo "</pre>";
echo "<pre>";
var_dump($client->__getLastResponse());
echo "</pre>";
}
}
As you can see it 's a bit different from your given example. Instead of an array it 's the soap encoded authentication object, that is given to the soap header class. For failure purposes there is a try/catch block around your soap client. In that case you can identify the error and if the client was initiated correctly, you can also see the last request and last response in xml.
I hope, that I helped you. ;)

Answer 2

I would strongly advise you 2 things:
Use a WSDL to PHP generator in order to properly construct your request. In addition, it will ease you the response handling. Everything is then using the OOP which is much better. Take a look to the PackageGenerator project.
Use the WsSecurity project in order to easily add your dedicated SoapHeader without wondering how to construct it neither.