Exchange variables between servers

steinarasb

I have to servers, the main server(server1) is PHP4(/FreeBSD) and MySQL4, the second(server2) is PHP5(/SUSE) and MySQL5.
The reason I use PHP5 and Mysql5 on the second server is that i need to use "stored procedures".
Server1 runs my webpage. So what i need to do is: From a function on server1, I need to call a script on server2, and have this script to return an array or a string to server1.
For now i call the script on server2 from server1 (include "http://server2.com/script.php") and it executes the queries correctly, it can also give me output in the webbrowser (i.e. I "echo" the variable in the script on server2). But i can not get the script to return any variables to server1.

Anyone?

Thanks in advance.

saraadmin

Using CURL immediately springs to mind:

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://server2.com/script.php");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

The output produced by http://server2.com/script.php will now be stored in $response. I suppose the trick is to make sure that the output is usable.

You could write http://server2.com/script.php so that its output is valid PHP code and execute it with eval(); or so that its output is data formatted as XML and load it into the PHP DOM.

This may not be the best solution as the output of http://server2.com/script.php will be publicly available.

samudasu

You can serialize() the array or variable in your include script.

http://server2.com/script.php

$arr = array("a" => "aaa", "b" => "bbb", "c" => "ccc");
$ser = serialize($arr);
return $ser;

call the include file.....

$ser = include "http://server2.com/script.php";
$unser = unserialize($ser);
print $unser['a'];
print $unser['b'];
print $unser['c'];

steinarasb

Thanks to both of you for replying. I had my ISP installing CURL for me last night. This so I could test saraadmin's solution. Before this I also asked them for a possible solution, they also mentioned CURL so I decided to go for that.

The code i'm using is:

$post_data['var1'] = $string
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://server2/script.php" );
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); // 0, not 1
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_data);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$response = unserialize(curl_exec($ch));
curl_close($ch);

The $response variable now contains a comma-separated string.

Since the CURLOPT_HEADER is 0, instead of 1 (I think this is what did the trick) the data is usable for me "out of the box".

In the server2/script.php, this is what i "return" (actually print...):

print_r(serialize(implode(",",$myArray)));

The problem with samudasu's solution, in MY case. Is that

$ser = include "http://server2.com/script.php";

gets the value 1, and nothing else. If this can be solved it might be an easier solution. At least you could get away without installing curl...

Thanks again!!!
Hope this helps someone else to!!

samudasu

Very important! You have to "return" a value from the include file or else it won't work.

$arr = array("a" => "aaa", "b" => "bbb", "c" => "ccc");
$ser = serialize($arr);
return $ser; // If you don't this you'll only get a value of 1

steinarasb

I did that, no dice...
Might be that our php versions differ...(?)

samudasu

Yeah, i see now. It works fine on localhost but not with a remote url. Curl just might be the best way like saraadmin pointed out especially if you're sending post data to the remote function. file_get_contents() instead of include() is another option.