Returning a PHP Array from a PHP SoapServer

Question

I'm relatively new to Soap on the "creating the service side", so appologies in advance for any terminology I'm munging.

Is it possible to return a PHP array from a Remote Procedure Soap Service that's been setup using PHP's SoapServer Class?

I have a WSDL (built by blindly following a tutorial) that, in part, looks something like this

<message name='genericString'>
    <part name='Result' type='xsd:string'/>
</message>

<message name='genericObject'>
    <part name='Result' type='xsd:object'/>
</message>

<portType name='FtaPortType'>       
    <operation name='query'>
        <input message='tns:genericString'/>
        <output message='tns:genericObject'/>
    </operation>        
</portType>

The PHP method I'm calling is named query, and looks something like this

public function query($arg){
    $object = new stdClass();
    $object->testing = $arg;
    return $object;     
}

This allows me to call

$client = new SoapClient("http://example.com/my.wsdl");
$result = $client->query('This is a test');

and dump of result will look something like

object(stdClass)[2]
    public 'result' => string 'This is a test' (length=18)

I want to return a native PHP array/collection from my query method. If I change my query method to return an array

public function query($arg) {
    $object = array('test','again');
    return $object;
}

It's serialized into an object on the client side.

object(stdClass)[2]
    public 'item' => 
        array
            0 => string 'test' (length=4)
            1 => string 'again' (length=5)

This makes sense, as I've specific a xsd:object as the Result type in my WSDL. I'd like to, if possible, return an native PHP array that's not wrapped in an Object. My instincts say there's a specific xsd:type that will let me accomplish this, but I don't know. I'd also settle for the object being serialized as an ArrayObject.

Don't hold back on schooling me in the technical details os WSDL. I'm trying to get a grasp on the underlying concepts fo

Answer 1

Little trick - encode as JSON objects, decode back into recursive associative arrays:

$data = json_decode(json_encode($data), true);

Answer 2

I used this WSDL generator to create description file.

Returning array of strings is something what my web service does, here's part of WSDL:

<wsdl:types>
<xsd:schema targetNamespace="http://schema.example.com">
  <xsd:complexType name="stringArray">
    <xsd:complexContent>
      <xsd:restriction base="SOAP-ENC:Array">
        <xsd:attribute ref="SOAP-ENC:arrayType" wsdl:arrayType="xsd:string[]" />
      </xsd:restriction>
    </xsd:complexContent>
  </xsd:complexType>
</xsd:schema>

</wsdl:types>
<message name="notifyRequest">
  <part name="parameters" type="xsd:string" />
</message>
<message name="notifyResponse">
  <part name="notifyReturn" type="tns:stringArray" />
</message>

Then API function notify is defined:

<wsdl:operation name="notify">
  <wsdl:input message="tns:notifyRequest" />
  <wsdl:output message="tns:notifyResponse" />
</wsdl:operation>

Answer 3

Alan, why not cast your object as an array when your client receives the response?

e.g.

(array) $object;

This will convert your stdClass object into an array, there is no measurable overhead to this, and is O(1) in PHP.

You may want to try changing the type from xsd:object to soap-enc:Array as well.