Parsing XML request - php

Question

I'm very very new to being on the Server side of things. I need to set up a simple server.php to receive xml requests.
I'm not even sure how to start with this. I am used to the normal Post/Get variables from forms.
Here's an example of what I'm listening for, and needing to respond to:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<authenticate xmlns="http://someplace.someplace.com/">
<strUserName xsi:type="xsd:string">username</strUserName>
<strPassword xsi:type="xsd:string">password</strPassword>
</authenticate>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
Obviously there's a username/password I can see inside.
Validating the user/pass is the easy part, but how do I parse that out?

Answer 1

You can also use DOM element to access your desired values:
$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<authenticate xmlns="http://someplace.someplace.com/">
<strUserName xsi:type="xsd:string">username</strUserName>
<strPassword xsi:type="xsd:string">password</strPassword>
</authenticate>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>';
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadXML( $xml );
$username = $dom->getElementsByTagName('strUserName')->item(0)->nodeValue;
$password = $dom->getElementsByTagName('strPassword')->item(0)->nodeValue;

Answer 2

Give it a try with SimpleXML, you have a few examples here:
SimpleXML examples

Answer 3

You should probably use existing API when parsing a SOAP request. This will not only automatically get rid of your parsing problems but also generate correct SOAP output.
Example:
$request = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<authenticate xmlns="http://someplace.someplace.com/">
<strUserName xsi:type="xsd:string">foo</strUserName>
<strPassword xsi:type="xsd:string">bar</strPassword>
</authenticate>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>';
$s = new SoapServer(NULL, array('uri' => 'http://someplace.someplace.com/'));
$s->setClass("Auth");
$s->handle($request);
class Auth
{
public function authenticate($strUserName, $strPassword)
{
return "U: $strUserName; P: $strPassword";
}
}
Note: If you do not pass an argument to handle() it will use POST data.