Question

I am new to the world of PHP and coding as those have helped me answer a number of questions I have posted know. I have the opportunity to jump into the deep end however seeing I have no clue about PHP and web services, I am seeking your help. I would appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction as I have not been able to find any examples nor detailed information regarding it.

Effectively there is a PHP page that needs to pass certain values to a .NET web service i.e. name, email, mobile number and upon the receipt of such information the web service sends out a text message. This is information I have so far

The Allocation service uses a basic HTTP binding and TransportWithMessageCredential security.

Sample C# code using a reference generated with Visual Studio tooling
Allocation.AllocationServiceV3Client Client = new Allocation.AllocationServiceV3Client();
Allocation.AllocateResult Result;
string VoucherCode;
DateTime ExpiryDate;
string DisplayMessageText;
Client.ClientCredentials.UserName.UserName = ? ;
Client.ClientCredentials.UserName.Password = ? ;
 Result = Client.AllocateToConsumerMobileAndSendSMS(out VoucherCode,
                                                               out ExpiryDate,
                                                               out DisplayMessageText,
                                                               ClientID,
                                                               ClientReference,
                                                               CampaignID,
                                                               ActivityID,
                                                               MobileNumber);
if (Result != Allocation.AllocateResult.Success)
{
}

Answer 1

I have no clue about PHP and web services

First things first, pick your brain up out of the C# soup and sit it out to dry off for a few hours. PHP is a simple language for simple things. If you’re new to it, you don’t want to try and make it do complex things, and you certainly don’t want to try writing C# style code in PHP.

Let’s take "web services" as an example of a "complex" thing. In some circles, this means horribly designed monstrosities like SOAP. VS makes it relatively easy to build SOAP bindings to your existing classes, so it’s not a painful solution for you.

SOAP is a very painful solution for PHP.

Effectively there is a PHP page that needs to pass certain values to a .NET web service

It sounds like you have an existing web service set up then, correct?

You could try and use the built in SOAP client, but it’s an undebuggable and unconfigurable binary blob of horrors that will make you want to kill someone if it doesn’t work for you immediately.

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Edit: The section below was written incorrectly assuming that both sides were under your control. As this is not the case, you can disregard the rest of the answer. I’m leaving it up because it may be valuable to others.

I would advise a different approach. Set up an endpoint (URL) in your .NET application that expects the data you’ve specified as POST values, and have PHP POST the data. This has the distinct advantage of being incredibly simple. Because you’re new to PHP, simple is a big win.

(In other words, ditch the "web service" — or make a parallel copy if other things consume that service already.)

PHP comes with a service called PEAR, a repository of helpful classes. You can use HTTP_Request2 to quickly build the HTTP POST request. Chances are that it’s already installed. If it isn’t, it’s easy to install either at the system level using the pear command, or locally in your project.

Here’s some quick example code copied straight out of the reference guide:

$request = new HTTP_Request2('http://www.example.com/your/endpoint/url.foo');
$request->setMethod(HTTP_Request2::METHOD_POST)
    ->addPostParameter('name', '...')
    ->addPostParameter('email', '...')
    ->addPostParameter('mobile', '...');
$response = $request->send();

You can then read the response as needed.

Now, this isn’t a perfect solution. Your C# code mentions a username and password, which I suppose could be included in the POST data. You could also use HTTP authentication (supported by HTTP_Request2) instead.