Zend Framework

The Zend Framework team announces the immediate availability of version 1.8.4pl1:

This patch-level version corrects a missing patch for Zend_Loader_PluginLoader that provided some critical functionality for Zend_Amf users. If you utilize that component, you are encouraged to upgrade immediately; for all other uses, the release tarball remains the same as the 1.8.4 version, and upgrading is left to your discretion.

Look for an announcement of a preview release or beta of 1.9.0 in the coming weeks. We have confirmation of many exciting new features, including the long awaited Zend_Queue and Zend_Feed_Reader components

The long-awaited new release of Zend Studio is around the corner, and it brings a host of new features and enhancements:

• Support for the new PHP 5.3
• Enhanced code editing - refactoring, semantic analysis,
   mark occurrences, and more
• Quick & easy debugging – detection and diagnosis of
   problems with Zend Server integration
• Enhanced Zend Framework integration – code generation
   with Zend_Tool, and more
• Better performance

Zend Server, the new PHP server that was just released last month, is now out with its new 4.0.2 release.  The new release is bug fix and feature update release. Zend claims to have fixed over 80 bugs with 4.0.2. It also marks the debut of the first generally available release of Zend Server Community Edition (CE)for Apple Macs.

To date, Zend Server CE has been only generally available for Linux and Windows but now Zend is aiming to include Mac (which had been in a longer release candidate stage) to be synchronized alongside the other operating system releases.

Another noteworthy update to Zend Server is the inclusion of Zend Framework 1.8 which was just released last week. Together with Zend Server the new Framework release takes advantage of the servers caching features which should help to improve PHP performance for users.

The open source stack ecosystem is not a slow moving one, so it's great to see that Zend is keep pace with regular and rapid updates to Zend Server.

Web services are software systems designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Nowadays if you want to connect external systems, you probably want or have to use web services. What I will discuss here is how to get your own SOAP web service up in minutes.

SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol ) is probably the most used web service protocol today. It relies on XML as its message format, and it uses HTTP for message transmission. The SOAP server uses WSDL(Web Services Description Language ) to describe its services to external clients. WSDL is simply an XML-based language that provides a model for describing Web services.

Back in the old days you had to know a lot about SOAP and WSDL create a web service. Have a look at http://www.php.net/soap to see what I mean. Definitely not very good looking. Luckily Zend Framework has a nice component, Zend_Soap, that handles all the SOAP hard work you would be supposed to do.

So without further ado, here's the code(discussing a Zend Framework component, the code presented here uses the Zend MVC, but you can use it without the Zend MVC):

This is the source code for the controller:

require_once realpath(APPLICATION_PATH .
'/../library/').'/Soaptest.php';

class SoapController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
    //change this to your WSDL URI!
   private $_WSDL_URI="http://192.168.188.128:8081/soap?wsdl";

    public function indexAction()
    {    
        $this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender();
            
        if(isset($_GET['wsdl'])) {
            //return the WSDL
            $this->hadleWSDL();
        } else {
            //handle SOAP request
            $this->handleSOAP();
        }
    }

    private function hadleWSDL() {
        $autodiscover = new Zend_Soap_AutoDiscover();
        $autodiscover->setClass('Soaptest');
        $autodiscover->handle();
    }
    
    private function handleSOAP() {
        $soap = new Zend_Soap_Server($this->_WSDL_URI); 
        $soap->setClass('Soaptest');
        $soap->handle();
    }
    
    public function clientAction() {
        $client = new Zend_Soap_Client($this->_WSDL_URI);
        
        $this->view->add_result = $client->math_add(11, 55);
        $this->view->not_result = $client->logical_not(true);
        $this->view->sort_result = $client->simple_sort(
       array("d" => "lemon", "a" => "orange",
             "b" => "banana", "c" => "apple"));
        
    }

}

And the code for the Soaptest.php class:

class Soaptest {
    /**
     * Add method
     *
     * @param Int $param1
     * @param Int $param2
     * @return Int
     */
    public function math_add($param1, $param2) {
        return $param1+$param2; 
    }
    
    /**
     * Logical not method
     *
     * @param boolean $param1
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function logical_not($param1) {
        return !$param1;
    }
    
    /**
     * Simple array sort
     *
     * @param Array $array
     * @return Array
     */
    public function simple_sort($array) {
        asort($array);
        return $array;
    }
    
}

You can also download the full project here.

As you can see you don't have to write a lot of code to back up the web service.

Let's discuss the controller first, because there's where the “magic” happens. The index action handles two types of requests: the request for the WSDL, handled by the hadleWSDL() method and the actual SOAP request, handled by the handleSOAP() method.

You can go ahead and try to see how your WSDL looks by accessing http://URL_TO_WEB_SERVICE/soap?wsdl , where URL_TO_WEB_SERVICE is the URL where you have deployed the example. Now imagine that you would have to construct and maintain this yourself, by hand, as old school bearded guys would. Well you don't, because this is handled by Zend_Soap_AutoDiscover which will create the WSDL file for you. The only thing that Zend_Soap_AutoDiscover needs to know is the class you want to use for the web service. Also, because PHP is not strongly typed, you will have to put PHPDoc blocks, because SOAP needs to know what types you are using as parameters and what types you are returning. Have a look here if PHPDoc does not ring a bell .

The SOAP server is handled by the Zend_Soap_Server class, and all it needs is the class you intend to use for the web service, and the URI to your WSDL file. Remember when you checked out how the WSDL file looks? That's exactly the URI you will have to use. In the example you will have to put that into the $_WSDL_URI variable, defined in the SoapController.

That was the SOAP server. Simple, right? Now let's have some tests on the server by implementing a simple SOAP client. The client is handled by the Zend_Soap_Client class that is constructed in the same manner as the server class, it needs just the URI to the WSDL file. After you have constructed the client, you can access the methods defined by the SOAP server in the same way you would access the methods of an object. In the example above you have a simple class, called Soaptest, that defines three very simple methods. Feel free to change the class and test your own methods. While you are playing with the server, you might notice that the WSDL file is cached, so if you change something into the Soaptest.php file, you might not get the expected result. Just delete the cached WSDL file from /tmp/wsdl-* while you do your tests.

Source - http://bogdan-albei.blogspot.com/2009/05/quickstart-web-services-with-soap-and.html