Question

I’m extending a webapp written with CI to communicate with visual basic application.

First of all i’d like to know if the solution i’ve choosen is a good option… i previously worked whith xml-rpc and put hands in a REST service, but to me SOAP solutions look more complete. Am i wrong?

Anyway, the problem up to now is that i cant call function inside my controller… here’s my code:

class Webservice extends CI_Controller {

    function  __construct() {
        parent::__construct();
    }

    public function index() {
        $server = new SoapServer("http://www.site.com/test.wsdl");
        $server->setObject($this);
        //$server->addFunction('sayHello');
        $server->handle();
    }

    function sayHello($name) {
        $salute = "Hi " . $name . ", it's working!";
        return $salute;
    }

}

I’ve compiled the wsdl file, but after i call site.com/webservice i get the following error:

SoapServer::addFunction() [soapserver.addfunction]: Tried to add a non existant function ‘sayHello’

I’ve also tried passing $CI=& get_instance() to $server->setObject(), but i think its the same as passing $this.

UPDATE – 12/09/2011

I figured it out… there is no need to use addFunction() if is already set the entire object $this. SOAP will call only the functions declared in the wsdl file, anyway it seems that i could not set a function as privete/protected.

Having said that I’m not sure to go ahead with SOAP… the tutorial written by Phil Sturgeon show a good solution using REST approach that return different response types (json, xml, serialize, csv).

Answer 1

More complete? How so?

SOAP is a much more defined and typed transfer protocol, but it’s complicated as hell for just sending data around. WSDL is to me a layer of complexity that is unnecessary. It is used just to tell the client and server what type the data is, but PHP doesn’t give a damn about type so why use this?

REST and JSON = quick and easy
SOAP and XML = slower and fugly