Question

In my project I suppose to write a desktop app that sends an xml document as file or as string,
to a php script on server that need to parse it.
Right now, I have php script that parse the xml, and have the xml ready at the desktop app.
My questions are:
a. which way is better: to send the document as file, or as string?
b. How to implement the request (file or string) by C#, and the acception of the document by php.

Notes:
a. I can use only C# at the desktop application.
b. I can use only php script on the server.
c. I use System.xml.linq to handle the xml document at the desktop app.

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

This can be as simple or as complex as you like 😉
Here’s a very simple, basic example (without error handling et al):

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using System.Net;

namespace LinqXMLTest
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Object[] res = { "Stackoverflow", true, 'x', 42};
            XElement xml = new XElement("Foo",
                from a in res select
                    new XElement("bar",
                        new XElement("type", a.GetType()),
                        new XElement("value", a.ToString())
                    )
            );

            HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://localhost/test.php");
            request.Method = "POST";
            xml.Save( request.GetRequestStream() );
            HttpWebResponse resp = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;
        }
    }
}

and as “receiver”:

<?php
$fp = fopen('php://input', 'rb');
file_put_contents('test.dat', $fp);

afterwards the file test.dat on the server contains

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Foo>
  <bar>
    <type>System.String</type>
    <value>Stackoverflow</value>
  </bar>
  <bar>
    <type>System.Boolean</type>
    <value>True</value>
  </bar>
  <bar>
    <type>System.Char</type>
    <value>x</value>
  </bar>
  <bar>
    <type>System.Int32</type>
    <value>42</value>
  </bar>
</Foo>

see also:
XElement.Save Method (Stream)
WebRequest.GetRequestStream Method
http://docs.php.net/wrappers.php.php