XML Post Using PHP

wejgo

Hello,

I am a new php programmer that has used ASP 3.0 for years. I have created a form and need to use an XML Form Post to send data to another server.... I can do this in ASP easily:

Set xml = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
xml.open "POST", "https://external.server.com/post.asp" , false
xml.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
xml.send PostData
strStatus = xml.Status
strRetval = xml.responseText
set xml = nothing

where PostData is the querystring that I am sending to the other server. How can I achieve this in PHP. I see a lot of stuff on the Internet, but nothing that specifies this type of transfer. Thanks guys!

Adam F. Harris

Tswitz00

I just wanted to bump this thread and see if anyone could come up with an awnser.

I am needing to post XML to a url via php. I found some examples using cURL but I am having trouble getting it installed on the server so an example without having to use cURL would be greatly appreicated.

Thanks

MarkR

You can do it without curl in recentish versions (4.3.0 +).

Use the fopen context wrappers stuff; you can create posts with whatever payload you want.

Incidentially, data with content type "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" is not XML, so either you've got the content type wrong, or it isn't XML.

And yes, the COM Object XmlHttpRequest can be used to post non-XML data. It's badly named that's all.

What you need to do is create a stream context:

$context_options = array(
			'http'=>array(
			'method'=>"POST",
			'header'=>"Accept-language: en\r\n" .
				"Content-length: " . strlen($urlencoded) . "\r\n" .
				"Content-type:application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n",
			'content'=> $urlencoded)
		);
		// Make sure the HTTPS options are the same as HTTP
		$context_options['https'] = $context_options['http'];
		$context = stream_context_create($context_options);
$fp = fopen($url, 'r', false, $context);

As you can see, you create an associative array of context options, one of which is "content" which contains the POST payload. The others are also required.

Note that the above code does not post XML either, but rather a x-www-form-urlencoded POST, which is more common.

Mark