SoapVar/Param and nested, repeated elements in SOAP

Question

My goal is to be able to create a soap request that can contain items like so:

<flexFields>
  <names>
    <names>IAG Group</names>
    <names>Ticket #</names>
  </names>
</flexFields>

However, every combination of soapvar and soapparam I've been able to think up either makes it impossible for me to duplicate the nested 'names' tag. I can get 1 sub tag like so:

$flexFields = array(
  'names'=> new SoapVar(
      new SoapVar(array('names'=>'IAG Group'),SOAP_ENC_OBJECT),
    SOAP_ENC_OBJECT)
);

This generates:

<flexFields xsi:type="ns2:SoapNamedValues">
  <names xsi:type="names">
    <names xsi:type="xsd:string">IAG Group</names>
  </names>
</flexFields>

But any attempt I make to get the names tag to repeat either generates a dreaded BOGUS element if I use SOAP_ENC_OBJECT, or wraps every item in another 'item' element if I use SOAP_ENC_ARRAY, which is also not desirable.

I know I could just manually create what I want and load it with XSD_ANYXML, but that is getting close to the line of defeating the purpose of using the SOAP library.

Can anyone provide an example of just how to perfectly balance the soapvar/soapparam + array nesting to get this to actually work? Or am I attempting the impossible with PHP's SOAP library?

Answer 1

I have a similar problem, try this:

$Names=array();
$Names[]=new SoapVar("IAG Group",XSD_STRING,null,null,'names');
$Names[]=new SoapVar("Ticket #",XSD_STRING,null,null,'names');
$BigNames=new SoapVar($Names,SOAP_ENC_OBJECT,null,null,'Names');

This creates and array of of SoapVar objects ($Names) and places them in the BigNames object, creating an output like this:

<Names>
    <names>IAG Group</names>
    <names>Ticket #</names>  
</Names>

You can then create another SoapVar object for FlexFields, but for some reason you can't place a SoapVar object directly into another, it has to be stored in an array...

I want to do this:

$FlexFields=new SoapVar($BigNames,SOAP_ENC_OBJECT,null,null,'FlexFields');

This works:

$FF=array($BigNames);
$FlexFields=new SoapVar($FF,SOAP_ENC_OBJECT,null,null,'FlexFields');

Answer 2

I ran into the BOGUS tag problem also. My solution involved using an ArrayObject in place of array primitives. The objects are all then converted to SoapVar objects. It seems the soap library really wants to deal with objects everywhere. I have a more complete writeup here:

http://www.fischco.org/blog/2011/3/26/php-soapserver-objects-arrays-and-encoding.html