Premature end of file. XML response - php

Question

I am getting a Premature end of file response to my XML request for following code.
Cant figure out where is the error.
$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" ?>';
$xml .= '<PickUpCityListRQ>';
$xml .= '<Credentials username="'.$api->username.'" password="'.$api->password.'" remoteIp="'.$api->remoteIp.'" />';
$xml .= '<Country>UK</Country>';
$xml .= '</PickUpCityListRQ>';
$url = 'https://secure.rentalcars.com/service/ServiceRequest.do?serverName=www.rentalcars.com&xml='.utf8_decode(trim($xml));
$port = 443;
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
$ch = curl_init(); // initialize curl handle
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); // set url to post to
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, true); // Fail on errors
if (ini_get('open_basedir') == '' && ini_get('safe_mode' == 'Off'))
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);// allow redirects
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // return into a variable
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PORT, $port); //Set the port number
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 30); // times out after 15s
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, '&xml='.$xml); // add POST fields
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $user_agent);
if ($port==443) {
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 2);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
}
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type:application/xml; charset=UTF-8', 'Accept: application/xml; charset=UTF-8'));
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
Have tried sending data in post fields as well but did not work.
Response:
<!DOCTYPE DefaultRS SYSTEM 'https://xml.rentalcars.com:443//tj.dtd'><DefaultRS>
<Error id="2">
<Message>Premature end of file.</Message>
</Error>
</DefaultRS>
Any help appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

You need to url encode the xml data before you can use it as a query parameter. So the url assignment becomes:
$url = 'https://secure.rentalcars.com/service/ServiceRequest.do?
serverName=www.rentalcars.com&xml='.urlencode(utf8_decode(trim($xml)));
Note, I've just wrapped that for readability - that should obviously be on one line.

Answer 2

After trying a lot of variation I finally managed to make it work.
There were two things that were casuing problem.
utf8_decode should be utf8_encode
POSTFIELDS data is supposed to be an array
otherwise parser will throw Premature end of file or not send back anything.