Send and receive XML during checkout process

[aaronvegh]

Hi there,
I'm having conceptual difficulties with this problem, so I'm hoping you can give me guidance as much as coding examples here.

I'm building a checkout process for my e-commerce site. When the user indicates, on an HTML form, they want the items shipped, I want the page to reload with the shipping options and prices.

I'm using Canada Post's shipping module, which has me sending their server XML data, and they send me back XML with the options, which I then have to parse and format. That's not really the problem, as there's much advice out there on that part.

However, conceptually, I'm having difficulty with simultaneously having the user click "Continue" to proceed to the shipping page, and both sending and receiving the XML to a totally separate server. It feels like I'm juggling too many balls here.

In a nutshell: how do I simultaneously 1) accept the user's choice of shipping; 2) build the XML query for the Canada Post server; 3) Receive the response; and 4) format it properly for display, all while just loading one PHP page?

Thanks in advance,
Aaron.

[Wynder]

Toughie -- may want to look into PHP's socket() functions.

[aaronvegh]

Bam! That was it. Thanks very much.

For anyone searching on this topic, the answer involves sending a socket() request using PHP's various socket functions. The documentation at the PHP site provided an example (Example 2, using socket as a TCP client) that, with a touch of tweaking, provided exactly what I needed.

Cheers!
Aaron.