New IT Discovery: XMLRPC in PHP

Do you want your Perl code on one server to call your PHP functions on another? "Impossible!" you say? Not with XML-RPC. XML-RPC is a standard way for any application to make requests and recieve responses from methods written in any language. Interested? I knew you would be.
What is XML-RPC?
XML-RPC was developed by UserLand Software (http://www.userland.com) in April of 1998 as
a technology to enable applications to talk to each other, no matter what
language they are written in or where they are running. Since then, many
implementations have been made beyond the original one for UserLand's Frontier
product, and many major companies have adopted the technology for their
products, including Microsoft's .NET and Apple's Mac OS X

.

XML-RPC is a
great enabler for distributed systems and system interoperability, as it allows
any XML-RPC enabled applications to call the methods of other XML-RPC enabled
applications, regardless of what language either application is written in, or
on what machine either application is running on. This allows a perl function to
make a call to a Python method, or a Java Servlet to call a PHP

function, for
example.

The upshot of XML-RPC is that a world of completely
heterogeneous applications can talk to each other with very little work from
their programmers.

Using XML-RPC with PHP - Compiling PHP with XML-RPC Support
(
Page 2 of 7 )

As of PHP

4.1.0, the XML-RPC extension is included in the source package with
the status of experimental. This extension is simply a copy of the XML-RPC EPI
extension that can be found at http://xmlrpc-epi.sourceforge.net/main.php?t=php_about

This
extension is by far the best way of implementing XML-RPC in PHP. Being an
extension to PHP and not a class or set of methods as the other solutions are,
it is written in C and is therefore much faster than any of the other
solutions.

The XML-RPC extension is not compiled with PHP by default. In
order to enable it, you will need to download the PHP 4.1.0 or greater source
from http://www.php.net/downloads.php and
run the configure script including the switch:


--with-xmlrpc

and compile and install as usual.

Doing this will make
available several new XML-RPC functions for use in your PHP scripts.

Now,
the built in XML-RPC functions are certainly not a joy to use, unless all you
want to do is encode PHP variables into XML-RPC requests. The built-in functions
will not make the actual requests themselves. I'll show you how to deal with
this later in the article.

Do you want your Perl code on one server to call your PHP functions on another? "Impossible!" you say? Not with XML-RPC. XML-RPC is a standard way for any application to make requests and recieve responses from methods written in any language. Interested? I knew you would be.
What is XML-RPC?
XML-RPC was developed by UserLand Software (http://www.userland.com) in April of 1998 as
a technology to enable applications to talk to each other, no matter what
language they are written in or where they are running. Since then, many
implementations have been made beyond the original one for UserLand's Frontier
product, and many major companies have adopted the technology for their
products, including Microsoft's .NET and Apple's Mac OS X


--with-xmlrpc


POST xmlrpcexample.php HTTP/1.0

User-Agent: xmlrpc-epi-php/0.2 (PHP)

Host: localhost:80

Content-Type: text/xml

Content-length: 191

<?xml version='1.0' encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>

<methodCall>

<methodName>greeting</methodName>



<params>

 <param>

  <value>

   <string>Lucas</string>

  </value>

 </param>



</params>

</methodCall>

The first part of the request is simply a standard HTML post
request. It's the data sent in the body of the request that interests
us.

The <methodCall> tags simply encapsulate the call,
with all the parameters enclosed in <params> and each
parameter enclosed in <param>.

Parameters are
specified enclosed in tags that tell the application what type of parameter they
are. In this case, "Lucas" is a string, so it is enclosed in
<string>, but there are a lot more parameter types:

<i4> or <int>	four-byte signed integer	10
<boolean>	0 (false) or 1 (true)	1
<string>	ASCII string	Hello, DevShed!
<double>	double-precision signed floating point number	-21.2544
<dateTime.iso8601>	date/time	20011219T12:05:26
<base64>	base64-encoded binary	eW91IGNhbid0IHJlYWQgdGhpcyE=

In addition to
the basic types, there are also <struct>s and
<array>s, <struct>s containing any number
of <member>s that consist of <name>s and

<value>s (specified in the same manner as
<param>s):

<struct>

 <member>

  <name>name</name>

  <value>



   <string>Lucas Marshall</string>

  </value>

 </member>

 <member>

  <name>age</name>



  <value>

   <i4>20</i4>

  </value>

 </member>

</struct>

and arrays merely containing any number of
<value>s:

<array>



 <value><i4>10</i4></value>

 <value><i4>20</i4></value>

 <value><i4>30</i4></value>



</array>

Using XML-RPC with PHP - Dissection of a XML-RPC Response
(
Page 4 of 7 )

And
here's the response to the call:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Connection: close

Content-Length: 191

Content-Type: text/xml

Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:23:52 GMT

Server: xmlrpc-epi-php/0.2 (PHP)

<?xml version='1.0' encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>

<methodResponse>

<params>

 <param>



  <value>

   <string>Hello Lucas. How are you today?</string>

  </value>

 </param>

</params>

</methodResponse>

With your newly found knowledge of XML-RPC calls, it is easy
to decipher standard responses. Normal responses consist of

<params> container with <param> elements
(and all they are heir to) sent inside <methodResponse> tags,
but there is another type of response - a fault:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Connection: close

Content-Length: 356

Content-Type: text/xml

Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 13:52:25 GMT

Server: Apache/1.3.20

<?xml version='1.0' encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>

<methodResponse>

<fault>

 <value>



  <struct>

   <member>

    <name>faultCode</name>

    <value>

     <int>4</int>



    </value>

   </member>

   <member>

    <name>faultString</name>

    <value>



     <string>Too many parameters.</string>

    </value>

   </member>

  </struct>

 </value>



</fault>

</methodResponse>

As you can see, a fault response consists of a
<methodResponse> containing a <fault> which contains a
<value> which is a <struct> containing two
elements, one named <faultCode>, an <int>

and one named <faultString>, a
<string>.

Please note that a response cannot contain
both a <params> container and a <fault>
container.

Using XML-RPC with PHP - Creating an XML-RPC Server
(
Page 5 of 7 )

In the XML-RPC world,
you need a client and a server. The client is simply the application making the
request, and the server is simply the service that processes the request and
returns a response. In this section, we're looking at how to create an XML-RPC
server service.

PHP's

XML-RPC extension has several methods that deal
with servers, the most important being xmlrpc_server_create(),
xmlrpc_server_register_method() and
xmlrpc_server_call_method().

xmlrpc_create_server()

simply tells PHP that you would like to create a
server.

xmlrpc_server_register_method() registers PHP
methods with the XML-RPC server so they may be called by a
client.

xmlrpc_server_call_method() is used for passing a
request to the XML-RPC server and receiving a response.

Nothing teaches
like an example, so here you go (the comments in the example provide more
details about the functions).

<?php

/*

 *	First, we define some PHP functions to expose via

 *	XML-RPC. Any functions that will be called by a

 *	XML-RPC client need to take three parameters:

 *	The first parameter passed is the name of the

 *	XML-RPC method called, the second is an array

 *	Containing the parameters sent by the client, and

 *	The third is any data sent in the app_data

 *	parameter of the xmlrpc_server_call_method()

 *	function (see below).

 */

function uptime_func($method_name, $params, $app_data)

{

	return `uptime`;

}



function greeting_func($method_name, $params, $app_data)

{

	$name = $params[0];

	return "Hello, $name. How are you today?";

}



/*

 *	This creates a server and sets a handle for the

 *	server in the variable $xmlrpc_server

 */

$xmlrpc_server = xmlrpc_server_create();



/*

 *	xmlrpc_server_register_method() registers a PHP

 *	function as an XML-RPC method. It takes three

 *	parameters:

 *	The first is the handle of a server created with

 *	xmlrpc_server_create(), the second is the name to

 *	register the server under (this is what needs to

 *	be in the <methodName> of a request for this

 *	method), and the third is the name of the PHP

 *	function to register.

 */



xmlrpc_server_register_method($xmlrpc_server, "greeting", "greeting_func");

xmlrpc_server_register_method($xmlrpc_server, "uptime", "uptime_func");



/*

 *	When an XML-RPC request is sent to this script, it

 *	can be found in the raw post data.

 */

$request_xml = $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA;



/*

 *	The xmlrpc_server_call_method() sends a request to

 *	the server and returns the response XML. In this case,

 *	it sends the raw post data we got before. It requires

 *	3 arguments:

 *	The first is the handle of a server created with

 *	xmlrpc_server_create(), the second is a string containing

 *	an XML-RPC request, and the third is for application data.

 *	Whatever is passed into the third parameter of this function

 *	is passed as the third paramater of the PHP function that the

 *	request is asking for.

 */

$response = xmlrpc_server_call_method($xmlrpc_server, $request_xml, '');



// Now we print the response for the client to read.

print $response;



/*

 *	This method frees the resources for the server specified

 *	It takes one argument, a handle of a server created with

 *	xmlrpc_server_create().

 */

xmlrpc_server_destroy($xmlrpc_server);

?>

Using XML-RPC with PHP - Creating an XML-RPC Client
(
Page 6 of 7 )

Now that we
have a server, we need a client to call our methods. As mentioned before, the
XML-RPC EPI extension for PHP

does not make HTTP requests by itself. For that
reason, before it was included in the PHP distribution, the XML-RPC EPI PHP
extension came with some include files that had functions that make it a lot
easier to work with XML-RPC requests.

The only way to get these functions
is to download the XML-RPC EPI PHP extension source package from http://xmlrpc-epi.sourceforge.net/,
and install the files in the /sample/utils directory into a
directory in your PHP include_path. For the purpose of the next
pieces of example code, I will assume that you have copied the entire

utils directory into a directory in your include_path,
and renamed it xmlrpcutils.

Making a client is fairly
simple. The function that does all the work when we call our methods is
xu_rpc_http_concise(), which is defined in the
utils.php file of the xmlrpcutils directory now in our
PHP include_path.

First we'll make a client that calls the
first method we defined in the server section of the article, the

uptime method. This method does not require any parameters, so we
won't pass any in. My comments about what we are doing and why will appear as
comments in the code.

<?php

/*

 *	This allows us to use the functions that make

 *	making XML-RPC requests easy.

 */



include("xmlrpcutils/utils.php");



/*

 * 	For the next two lines use this guide.

 *	If your server script can be found at the URL:

 *	http://myhost.mydomain.com/xmlrpc_server.php

 *	$host should be "myhost.mydomain.com"

 *	and

 *	$uri should be "/xmlrpc_server.php"

 */



// Change these to match your configuration

$host = "myhost.mydomain.com";

$uri = "/xmlrpc_server.php";



/* 

 *	Here's where we make the request. xu_rpc_http_concise()

 *	takes one parameter - a keyed array that specifies all

 *	the info needed for the request.

 *	The most important (and required) elements are:

 *	'method' - specifies the method to call

 *	'host' - specifies the host the server script is on

 *	'uri' - specifies the uri of the server script on the server

 *	'port' - specifies the port the server is listening on

 *

 *	Here we are calling the uptime method of the 

 *	server script who's uri is specified in $uri of the 

 *	server that is at the hostname specified in $host and

 *	listening on port 80 and storing it's response (converted

 *	to a PHP data type) in $result.

 */



$result = xu_rpc_http_concise(

    array(

    	'method'	=> "uptime",

    	'host'  => $host,

    	'uri'  => $uri,

    	'port'  => 80

    )

);



print "The uptime on " . $host . " is " . $result;

?>

When this is run it should print something like:

The uptime on myhost.mydomain.com is 9:43pm up 5:12, 2 users, load average: 0.25, 0.24, 0.22

Where the uptime numbers are the same as those you get if you
run the 'uptime' command on the server running the server script.

Our
second example will call the greeting method. This is one that
requires a parameter - a name.

<?php

include("xmlrpcutils/utils.php");



$host = "myhost.mydomain.com";

$uri = "/xmlrpc_server.php";



// Change this to your name

$name = "yourname";



/*

 *	The difference between this call and the last is we pass

 *	in an array as the 'args' element of the array passed as

 *	the argument of the xu_rpc_http_concise() function.

 */ 



$result = xu_rpc_http_concise(

    array(

    	'method'	=> "greeting",

    	'args'  => array($name),

    	'host'  => $host,

    	'uri'  => $uri,

    	'port'  => 80

    )

);



print $result;

?>

When run, this should print:


Hello, yourname. How are you today?

These are some very simple examples -

xu_rpc_http_concise() can take some other arguments as well, and
there are more functions available. I recommend that you read through the files
in the xmlrpcutils directory to learn these for
yourself.

New IT Discovery

Saturday, October 31, 2009

XMLRPC in PHP

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