NuSOAP is a group of PHP classes that allow developers to create and consume SOAP web services. It does not require any special PHP extensions. The current release version (0.6.7) of NuSOAP at the time this was written (03-November-2004), supports much of the SOAP 1.1 specification. It can generate WSDL 1.1 and also consume it for use in serialization. Both rpc/encoded and document/literal services are supported. However, it must be noted that NuSOAP does not provide coverage of the SOAP 1.1 and WSDL 1.1 that is as complete as some other implementations, such as .NET and Apache Axis.

This document follows up Introduction to NuSOAP, Programming with NuSOAP, and Programming with NuSOAP Part 2 with additional samples that demonstrate how to use NuSOAP to create and consume SOAP web services using WSDL.

Hello, World Redux

Showing no imagination whatsoever, I used the ubiquitous “Hello, World” example in Introduction to NuSOAP. In that document, I showed the SOAP request and response exchanged by the client and server. Here, I extend that sample to use WSDL.

A WSDL document provides metadata for a service. NuSOAP allows a programmer to specify the WSDL to be generated for the service programmatically using additional fields and methods of the soap_server class.

The service code must do a number of things in order for correct WSDL to be generated. Information about the service is specified by calling the configureWSDL method. Information about each method is specified by supplying additional parameters to the register method. Service code for using WSDL is shown in the following example.

<?php

// Pull in the NuSOAP code

require_once('nusoap.php');

// Create the server instance

$server = new soap_server();

// Initialize WSDL support

$server->configureWSDL('hellowsdl', 'urn:hellowsdl');

// Register the method to expose

$server->register('hello',                // method name

    array('name' => 'xsd:string'),        // input parameters

    array('return' => 'xsd:string'),      // output parameters

    'urn:hellowsdl',                      // namespace

    'urn:hellowsdl#hello',                // soapaction

    'rpc',                                // style

    'encoded',                            // use

    'Says hello to the caller'            // documentation

);

// Define the method as a PHP function

function hello($name) {

        return 'Hello, ' . $name;

}

// Use the request to (try to) invoke the service

$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA = isset($HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA) ? $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA : '';

$server->service($HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA);

?>

Now for some magic. Point a Web browser at this service, which in my environment is at http://localhost/phphack/hellowsdl.php. The HTML that is returned to your browser gives you links to view the WSDL for the service or view information about each method, in this case the hello method. The screen should look something like this.