How PHP get the content from web service? - php

Question

I have a problem in getting the content/array from web service to my php code. When I type in the url in browser like http://server1-xeon.asuscomm.com/currency/?amount=1.20,from=MYR,to=SGD, then the result in the browser is displayed like this: [ 1.20MYR , 0.39SGD ]. My PHP code looks like this:
$ch = curl_init('http://server1-xeon.asuscomm.com/currency/?amount=1.20,from=MYR,to=SGD');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$content = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $content;
Unfortunately, I get nothing use the code above. Looking for help.
Thanks.
UPDATED
$data=array(
'amount'=>1.2,
'fromCurrency'=>'MYR',
'toCurrency'=>'SGD'
);
$data_string = json_encode($data);
$ch = curl_init('http://server1-xeon.asuscomm.com/currency/WebService.asmx/YaHOO_CurrencyEx');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data_string);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER,
array('Content-type: application/json'));
$content= curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$obj = json_decode($content);
echo $obj;

Answer 1

This page contains dynamic content, loaded by JavaScript. You can see it in Google Chrome for example by access view-source:http://server1-xeon.asuscomm.com/currency/?amount=1.20,from=MYR,to=SGD.
If you look closer to the source code of the page (file http://server1-xeon.asuscomm.com/currency/JQuery/app_converter.js) you'll see, that it uses this code to get exchange data under the hood:
$.ajax({type: "POST",
url: "WebService.asmx/YaHOO_CurrencyEx", // important: it's a relative URL!
data: "{amount:" + amount + ",fromCurrency:'" + from + "',toCurrency:'" + to + "'}",
contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
dataType: "json",
beforeSend: function () {},
success: function (data) {
$('#results').html(' [ ' + amount + from + ' , ' + data.d.toFixed(2) + to + ' ] ');
});
So, actually you can make such request in PHP to avoid access dynamic content on the http://server1-xeon.asuscomm.com/currency/?amount=1.20,from=MYR,to=SGD page.
UPD:
I've added a more complete explanation.
By the time the page on http://server1-xeon.asuscomm.com/currency/?amount=1.20,from=MYR,to=SGD is loaded, a JavaScript code on this page (it means that it's executed on the client side, in a browser, not on your server) parses URL parameters and makes AJAX POST request to the URL http://server1-xeon.asuscomm.com/currency/WebService.asmx/YaHOO_CurrencyEx. It passes a JSON payload {amount:1.20,fromCurrency:'MYR',toCurrency:'SGD'} and gets a response like this {"d":0.390360}. So, you can just make a direct POST request to the http://server1-xeon.asuscomm.com/currency/WebService.asmx/YaHOO_CurrencyEx via curl, passing an amount, fromCurrency and toCurrency in JSON body and then decode received JSON response using json_decode($content);.

Answer 2

How data should look? Add this to your code from "UPDATED" and run:
$array["MYR"] = 1.2;
$array["SGD"] = doubleval($obj->d)
// Print simple array (print source for example)
echo "<pre>";
print_r($array);
echo "</pre>";
// Print true JSON-array
print_r(json_encode($array));
In web browser you will see:
Array
(
[MYR] => 1.2
[SGD] => 0.39036
)
{"MYR":1.2,"SGD":0.39036}
Can't understand your problem at this moment.
If you want print only returned value (digits), do it: echo $obj->d;