PHP and Web Services

Bruno Pedro <bpedro@computer.org>

CITOT - May 20th 2007

PHP and Web Services

Summary

• What is PHP?

• Web Services

• SOAP

• REST

• JSON

• Conclusions

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PHP and Web Services

What is PHP?

• PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

• Open Source Web scripting language

• Created in 1994

• Syntax inherited from C, Java and Perl

• Powerful, yet easy to learn

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PHP and Web Services

How is PHP used?

• Content Management

• Forums

• Blogging

• Wiki

• CRM

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PHP and Web Services

Who uses PHP?

Source: Zend

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PHP and Web Services

Why use PHP?

• Used by 20M+ Web Sites around the globe

• Community-maintained documentation

• Code runs on UNIX, OSX and Windows

• Backed commercially by Zend

• Easy syntax

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PHP and Web Services

The PHP language

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Easy syntax!

PHP and Web Services

Creating a function

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function declaration

return value

function call

PHP and Web Services

Creating a class

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class declaration

public method

method call

PHP and Web Services

Web Services

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Source: The Server Side(http://tinyurl.com/38umxt)

PHP and Web Services

What are Web Services?

• Interoperable interactions

• Calls are made over a network

• Lots of different standards

• Popular Web sites use them

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PHP and Web Services

Requirements

• PHP 5.2.2

• SOAP

• simplexml

• DOM

• JSON

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PHP and Web Services

SOAP

Source: Prentice Hall(http://tinyurl.com/33dcch)

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PHP and Web Services

SOAP

• Simple Object Access Protocol

• Usually an HTTP POST request

• Call is encapsulated in XML

• Response is an XML document

• PHP handles everything

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PHP and Web Services

Server implementation

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namespace

start a server

assign a class

handle incoming calls

PHP and Web Services

Client implementation

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namespace

endpoint

display result

PHP and Web Services

Output

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namespace

result

PHP and Web Services

SOAP

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• Support for SOAP 1.1, 1.2 and WSDL 1.1

• Handles simple and complex types

• Very easy implementation

• Output is quite bulky

PHP and Web Services

REST

http://example.com/calculator/sum/?x=121&y=233

GETPUTPOSTDELETE

«interface»

ResourceGET - perform a calculationPUT - not usedPOST - not usedDELETE - not used

/calculator/sum/

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PHP and Web Services

REST

• Representational State Transfer

• Usually an HTTP GET request

• Call is made through GET parameters

• Response is an XML document

• Create response with DOM

• Interpret response with simplexml

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PHP and Web Services

Server implementation

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handle incoming call

create anXML document

add elements

output result

PHP and Web Services

Client implementation

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endpoint

arguments

load XML document

output result

PHP and Web Services

Output

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result

PHP and Web Services

REST

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• Interaction needs to be implemented

• XML schema must be know beforehand

• Complex types not handled natively

• Output is usually RSS

PHP and Web Services

JSON

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JSON LogoSource: json.org

PHP and Web Services

JSON

• JavaScript Object Notation

• REST approach

• Except response is not XML

• Used on the client side

• Create response with json_encode()

• Interpret response in JavaScript

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PHP and Web Services

Server implementation

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handle incoming call

generate result

outputJSON string

PHP and Web Services

Client implementation

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endpoint

arguments

output result

PHP and Web Services

Output

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result

PHP and Web Services

JSON

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• REST approach

• Handles simple and complex types

• Calls can be made with AJAX

• Can also be used on the server side

PHP and Web Services

Conclusions

• PHP is a powerful web scripting language

• Too many Web Services standards

• PHP handles all the internals

• REST requires more coding than SOAP

• Use JSON for client side applications

• XML-RPC support is still experimental

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PHP and Web Services

Questions?

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PHP and Web Services

Resources

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• My blog: http://unfoldingtheweb.com/

• PHP Manual: http://www.php.net/

• SOAP: http://www.w3.org/TR/soap/

• REST: http://tinyurl.com/akhc7

• JSON: http://www.json.org/