How to deal with the 'DataSet' data structure in php? - php

Question

I'm trying to do a call to a soap webservice from php.
The webservice returns an ADO.NET DataSet structure. Are there any libraries in PHP that can deal with this sort of data structures? If so, what are they called and where can I find them? If not, feel free to give tips?
So far, I have this (using ActiveMQ and the NuSoap library):
/**
* Create a new service instance
* Provide ActiveMQ uri and the extended class name
**/
$client = new Client('tcp://localhost:61613?tcpNoDelay=false', 'test');
/**
* New service reference
**/
$service = new ServiceProxy($client, 'ServiceName');
/* Service call */
$result = $service->get_clients();
get_clients() is a method that does the actual service call and it gets the DataSet structure in return. How can I manipulate this return value?
In .NET for example, there is a DataSet class. The ADO.NET DataSet contains one or more ADO.NET DataTables which in their turn consist out of one or more ADO.NET DataColumns and DataRows which are returned in a collection (array).
A simple code example, where the DataSet only contains one DataTable, can be:
/**
* Here, the val variable will contain the data positioned in the
* first field of the first DataRow of the first DataTable
**/
string val = dataset.Table[0].Rows[0].ItemArray[0];
I want to do the same in PHP, but I need a helping hand.

Answer 1

I would suggest you try learning more about the structure of the data you are working with. It is most likely some form of JSON or XML, which can be manipulated through the large set of PHP xml and json handling libraries.
Your first step is to look at the data being returned by your request and identifying it's format. Microsoft documents the ADO.NET API's datasets in depth HERE at the MSDN library. This should help you to make sense of what you are seeing when you inspect the data. Some data providers allow you to access the same data in different formats, depending on a parameter or a family of similar functions. Do you have documentation for your providers API?
Next, after you have identified the format and deciphered the specifics of the datasets schema, You need a class to manipulate the data. If you are dealing with something that conforms to a published standard you can use something like simpleXML, JSON or DOMXPath.This class should store the data in protected member variables and provide methods to inspect, iterate, load, refresh, search and so forth. You should refer to the PHP manual's function reference for help here and write whatever functions you need. I would write it generically to handle any similar dataset and derive a class to expose exactly the data I need for a particular application.
Another approach would be to write a COM component in a .net language to access and manipulate the data and import it's functions through PHP's COM extension. I think I would go with this choice if the data format is a weird proprietary Microsofty one.
The third possible approach works only if you have programming access to the server. If you can adapt the service provider to comply with the specification, Microsoft has released an interoperability toolkit which is supposed to act as a bridge between .net services and PHP clients using a layer of proxy objects to expose the ado.net data to PHP scripts. They throw the word RESTful around alot, but I'm not really sure what they mean by that. Check out the OData SDK for PHP HERE at Microsoft's interoperability HQ (there is info here about PHP and other Microsoft platforms and products like Azure, silverlight, Bing, etc., as well). As I said though, I think you would need the data provider to emit data which conforms to their standard. Perhaps it already does. I can't tell without a schema! If so then this is your best bet.
Good Luck!