Question

I am using PHP 5.2.10 and I am trying to consume a webservice which returns complex data types using the standard SOAP extension.

The problem is that SoapClient does not populate objects which are nested into other objects / array of objects. A simplified example of what I get when I call the getUtente method, specifying “my_unique_id” as a parameter is:

stdClass Object
(
    [getUtenteReturn] => stdClass Object
        (
            [userName] => my_unique_id
            [fieldOne] => ...
            [fieldTwo] => ...
            [utilizzatore] => stdClass Object
                ( // This is EMPTY instead of containing a series of userName's
                )

        )

)

The relevant part of the WDSL description is:

<element name="getUtenteResponse">
  <complexType>
    <sequence>
      <element name="getUtenteReturn" type="tns1:Cliente"/>
    </sequence>
  </complexType>
</element>
...
<complexType name="Utilizzatore">
  <sequence>
    <element name="userName" nillable="true" type="xsd:string"/>
  </sequence>
</complexType>
...
<complexType name="Cliente">
  <complexContent>
    <extension base="tns1:Utilizzatore">
      <sequence> 
        <element name="fieldOne" nillable="true" type="xsd:string"/>
        <element name="fieldTwo" nillable="true" type="xsd:string"/>
        <element name="utilizzatore" nillable="true" type="impl:ArrayOf_tns1_Utilizzatore"/>
      </sequence>
    </extension>
  </complexContent>
</complexType>

What I found I am not the only one experiencing this problem. In particular I found this comment in the PHP official documentation and this other forum entry to give two different ideas on how to approach the problem, but I have not been able to turn any of those two ideas into a working solution: I seem not to completely understand the logic behind the examples given.

I would be grateful if anybody could guide me in this: some working code on another webservice would be welcome, but what I am primarily after is really understanding the problem and the logic of the solutions proposed (the fish lane, not the fish!). 🙂

Answer 1

Old question, no answer. I recently stumbled on this post, that explains the problem and gives a solution: Consuming SOAP complexType webservice with PHP.