Webservices - advice needed

[RossC0]

Hi,

I'm creating a webservice wrapper for for a class - so other none php services can call it.

Due to the nature of the class - there are a multitude of settings for the config.

I thought a xml file with the settings could be passed to the webservice - then I don't have to worry about catering for all instances and keeps the webservice simple.

1) Is this a wise approach, for interaction with complex classes?
2) Any advice on how best to pass the xml settings across
(At the moment I'm base64 encoding them but there is a size cost approx 33% larger than the xml).

Many thanks in advance for any thoughts.

[bubblenut]

Are there any naemspace aware xml tools in PHP yet? I'm afraid I haven't been keeping up. If there are then that would be the way to go. Namespaces in xml allow you to inbed different xml formats within each other without having to worrying about namespace collisions.

If you're a bit of a masochist and like W3C documents then check out the spec otherwise there's nice little example driven tutorial here

[RossC0]

Well I'm using XML_Serialiser to create the XML in php from arrays etc...

The output is something like:

<graphInformation type="array">
<titles type="array">
<title type="string">Based on Example 21</title>
<data originalKey="xaxis-&gt;title" type="string">X-title</data>
<data originalKey="yaxis-&gt;title" type="string">Y-title</data>
</titles>
<includes type="array">

    <data _originalKey="0" _type="string">bar</data>
</includes>
<setup _type="array">
    <x _type="integer">310</x>
    <y _type="integer">200</y>
    <imageType _type="string">auto</imageType>
    <cacheTimeOut _type="integer">60</cacheTimeOut>

</setup>
<graphInitialiser _type="array">
    <GroupBarPlot _type="array">
        <data _originalKey="0" _type="string">$data1y</data>
        <data _originalKey="1" _type="string">$data2y</data>
    </GroupBarPlot>
</graphInitialiser>
<setShadow _type="string">y</setShadow>

<img _type="array">
    <SetMargin _type="string">40,30,20,40</SetMargin>
</img>
<dataElement _type="array">
    <data1y _type="array">
        <type _type="string">BarPlot</type>
        <SetFillColor _type="string">blue</SetFillColor>

        <dataSet _type="array">
            <data _originalKey="0" _type="integer">12</data>
            <data _originalKey="1" _type="integer">8</data>
            <data _originalKey="2" _type="integer">19</data>
            <data _originalKey="3" _type="integer">3</data>
            <data _originalKey="4" _type="integer">10</data>

            <data _originalKey="5" _type="integer">5</data>
        </dataSet>
    </data1y>[/QUOTE] 

But as there are differing amounts of data -

I think I need to be able to send over the xml in one go really (as a string?) - so that I dont have to code the nusoap server to worry about the number or mix of elements that are there.

😕

[bubblenut]

You could put it in a <![CDATA[ --yourstuffhere-- ]]> section.