ZF2 Soap Request - Send parameters

Question

I am trying to send a SOAP request to a client's API endpoint. I am not at all familiar with SOAP, so having quite a difficult time getting this to work.

From the client's documentation

The requested ticket can be used to call all the API web methods subsequently.

    public string RequestTicket( 
        string username,
        string password
    );

URL
    https://www.clientsurl.net/api/v01_00/APIService.asmx?wsdl


Parameters
    string username 
    string password
 

I am able to create the WSDL

    $client = new Client('https://www.clientsurl.ca/api/v01_00/APIService.asmx?wsdl', ['soap_version' => SOAP_1_1]);

but not sure how to send the parameters through

    $params = [
        'username' => 'myusername' 
        'password' => 'mypassword' 
    ];

I am also not sure what the relevance of RequestTicket is. Am I supposed to add it to the url?

The answer is probably very simple, but after tons of searching I couldn't find anything. Please help.

Answer 1

I have write a method to send a request

protected function soapRequest(string $method, array $arguments)
{
    try {
       $client = new \Zend\Soap\Client($this->getWsdl(),
            [
                'soap_version' => SOAP_1_1,
                'cache_wsdl' => WSDL_CACHE_NONE
            ]);
        $result = $client->{$method}($arguments);
        return $result->return;
    } catch (\SoapFault $s) {
       ...
    } catch (\Exception $e) {
       ...
    }
}

You must have a Soap method to send yours parameters. If you don't know the method name, I advise you to run SoapUI application, very useful for debugging soap requests.

Answer 2

A SOAP service has a set of operations that you can call over the network. These operations can also have parameters. Basically, it's just like calling a method with parameters in code just that the invocation happens over the network with the method name and parameters being marshaled into an XML that respects the rules of the SOAP protocol.

To call the SOAP service, you can either make a HTTP request of type POST to the service's endpoint (i.e. https://www.clientsurl.ca/api/v01_00/APIService.asmx) or you can use a SOAP client. A SOAP client is some code that you can generate from the WSDL of the SOAP web service, or is some code that can dynamically read the WSDL and provide you some ways to invoke the operations described there. As opposed to making a POST HTTP request, the client takes care of these details for you and allows you to make the call over the network just like you call a local method in your code.

To call an operation of the SOAP service in your client code you have to invoke a method with parameters. The name of the method and its parameters (what names and what types) are described by the WSDL of the service.

With that being said, I'll add some details about what you posted in your question.

The requested ticket can be used to call all the API web methods subsequently.

Some service operations can require authentication in order to be be allowed to invoke them. Just like you need a username and password to access protected sections of a website for example. For a SOAP web service, his can happen in a few ways, the most common two being:

1. you send the username and password with each call to the web service (somehow; can be as SOAP headers, as HTTP headers with BASIC Authentication, etc).
2. the service exposes a method that you have to call with username and password just like point 1), but then returns an access token of some sort that you then need to provide to the rest of the web service's operations. This is just like a Login page on a website where you authenticate with username and password and then you get back a SessionID that you can use on all other requests until you decide to log out.

It seems that your service uses the second approach, and RequestTicket seems to be the operation that you need to call in order to be able to call the rest of the operations after that.

I am able to create the WSDL

You do not create the WSDL, the WSDL already exists for the web service. Also make sure you do not make a confusion between the SOAP web service and its WSDL. The code you show just creates a SOAP client from the WSDL (what I described above) to allow you to invoke operations on it.

I am also not sure what the relevance of RequestTicket is. Am I supposed to add it to the url?

Most likely RequestTicket is an operation of the web service. You should look inside the WSDL to see if it's described there. The WSDL is a little tough to swallow if you are not familiar with how it works, so your best bet is to use a tool like SoapUI to feed it the web service WSDL and have SoapUI generate sample requests for the web service. You can then also use SoapUI to test the web service to make sure you understand how it works before you try to replicate the same calls with your PHP code.