1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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9 <title>XML-RPC for PHP</title>
11 <subtitle>version 3.1.1</subtitle>
14 <date>April 7, 2018</date>
18 <firstname>Edd</firstname>
20 <surname>Dumbill</surname>
24 <firstname>Gaetano</firstname>
26 <surname>Giunta</surname>
30 <firstname>Miles</firstname>
32 <surname>Lott</surname>
36 <firstname>Justin R.</firstname>
38 <surname>Miller</surname>
42 <firstname>Andres</firstname>
44 <surname>Salomon</surname>
49 <year>1999,2000,2001</year>
51 <holder>Edd Dumbill, Useful Information Company</holder>
55 <para>All rights reserved.</para>
57 <para>Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
58 modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
63 <para>Redistributions of source code must retain the above
64 copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
69 <para>Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
70 copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
71 disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided
72 with the distribution.</para>
76 <para>Neither the name of the "XML-RPC for PHP" nor the names of
77 its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
78 derived from this software without specific prior written
81 </itemizedlist></para>
83 <para>THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND
84 CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING,
85 BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
86 FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
87 REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
88 SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
89 TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
90 PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
91 LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
92 NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
93 SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.</para>
97 <chapter id="introduction">
98 <title>Introduction</title>
100 <para>XML-RPC is a format devised by <ulink
101 url="http://www.userland.com/">Userland Software</ulink> for achieving
102 remote procedure call via XML using HTTP as the transport. XML-RPC has its
104 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/">www.xmlrpc.com</ulink></para>
106 <para>This collection of PHP classes provides a framework for writing
107 XML-RPC clients and servers in PHP.</para>
109 <para>Main goals of the project are ease of use, flexibility and
112 <para>The original author is Edd Dumbill of <ulink
113 url="http://usefulinc.com/">Useful Information Company</ulink>. As of the
114 1.0 stable release, the project was opened to wider involvement and moved
116 url="http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/">SourceForge</ulink>; later, to <ulink
117 url="https://github.com/">Github</ulink></para>
119 <para>A list of XML-RPC implementations for other languages such as Perl
120 and Python can be found on the <ulink
121 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/">www.xmlrpc.com</ulink> site.</para>
124 <title>Acknowledgements</title>
126 <para>Daniel E. Baumann</para>
128 <para>James Bercegay</para>
130 <para>Leon Blackwell</para>
132 <para>Stephane Bortzmeyer</para>
134 <para>Daniel Convissor</para>
136 <para>Geoffrey T. Dairiki</para>
138 <para>Stefan Esser</para>
140 <para>James Flemer</para>
142 <para>Ernst de Haan</para>
144 <para>Tom Knight</para>
146 <para>Axel Kollmorgen</para>
148 <para>Peter Kocks</para>
150 <para>Daniel Krippner</para>
154 <para>A. Lambert</para>
156 <para>Frederic Lecointre</para>
158 <para>Dan Libby</para>
160 <para>Arnaud Limbourg</para>
162 <para>Ernest MacDougal Campbell III</para>
164 <para>Lukasz Mach</para>
166 <para>Kjartan Mannes</para>
168 <para>Ben Margolin</para>
170 <para>Nicolay Mausz</para>
172 <para>Justin Miller</para>
174 <para>Jan Pfeifer</para>
176 <para>Giancarlo Pinerolo</para>
178 <para>Peter Russel</para>
180 <para>Jean-Jacques Sarton</para>
182 <para>Viliam Simko</para>
184 <para>Idan Sofer</para>
186 <para>Douglas Squirrel</para>
188 <para>Heiko Stübner</para>
190 <para>Anatoly Techtonik</para>
192 <para>Tommaso Trani</para>
194 <para>Eric van der Vlist</para>
196 <para>Christian Wenz</para>
198 <para>Jim Winstead</para>
200 <para>Przemyslaw Wroblewski</para>
202 <para>Bruno Zanetti Melotti</para>
207 <title>What's new</title>
209 <para><emphasis>Note:</emphasis> not all items the following list have
210 (yet) been fully documented, and some might not be present in any other
211 chapter in the manual. To find a more detailed description of new
212 functions and methods please take a look at the source code of the
213 library, which is quite thoroughly commented in javadoc-like form.</para>
220 <para>This release makes the library compatible with php 7.2 by removing one warning</para>
223 </itemizedlist></para>
231 <para>This release makes the library compatible with php 7 by removing the deprecation warnings</para>
235 <para>addition of a 'setSSLVersion' method to the client class</para>
238 </itemizedlist></para>
246 <para>fixed: the library does not decode correctly LATIN-1 requests/responses if the character set is not set in the xml prolog</para>
250 <para>fixed: the debugger sends incorrect requests when the payload includes LATIN-1 characters</para>
254 <para>fixed: the client can not call remote methods which use LATIN-1 or UTF8 characters in their names</para>
257 </itemizedlist></para>
263 <para><emphasis>Note:</emphasis> this is the last release of the library that will support PHP 5.1 and up.
264 Future releases will target php 5.3 as minimum supported version.</para>
268 <para>when using curl and keepalive, reset curl handle if we did not get back an http 200 response (eg a 302)</para>
272 <para>omit port on http 'Host' header if it is 80</para>
276 <para>test suite allows interrogating https servers ignoring their certs</para>
280 <para>method setAcceptedCompression was failing to disable reception of compressed responses if the
281 client supported them</para>
284 </itemizedlist></para>
288 <title>3.0.0 beta</title>
290 <para>This is the first release of the library to only support PHP 5.
291 Some legacy code has been removed, and support for features such as
292 exceptions and dateTime objects introduced.</para>
294 <para>The "beta" tag is meant to indicate the fact that the refactoring
295 has been more widespread than in precedent releases and that more
296 changes are likely to be introduced with time - the library is still
297 considered to be production quality.</para>
301 <para>improved: removed all usage of php functions deprecated in
302 php 5.3, usage of assign-by-ref when creating new objects
307 <para>improved: add support for the <ex:nil/> tag used by
308 the apache library, both in input and output</para>
312 <para>improved: add support for <classname>dateTime</classname>
313 objects in both in <function>php_xmlrpc_encode</function> and as
314 parameter for constructor of
315 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname></para>
319 <para>improved: add support for timestamps as parameter for
320 constructor of <classname>xmlrpcval</classname></para>
324 <para>improved: add option 'dates_as_objects' to
325 <function>php_xmlrpc_decode</function> to return
326 <classname>dateTime</classname> objects for xmlrpc
331 <para>improved: add new method
332 <methodname>SetCurlOptions</methodname> to
333 <classname>xmrlpc_client</classname> to allow extra flexibility in
334 tweaking http config, such as explicitly binding to an ip
339 <para>improved: add new method
340 <methodname>SetUserAgent</methodname> to
341 <classname>xmrlpc_client</classname> to to allow having different
342 user-agent http headers</para>
346 <para>improved: add a new member variable in server class to allow
347 fine-tuning of the encoding of returned values when the server is
348 in 'phpvals' mode</para>
352 <para>improved: allow servers in 'xmlrpcvals' mode to also
353 register plain php functions by defining them in the dispatch map
354 with an added option</para>
358 <para>improved: catch exceptions thrown during execution of php
359 functions exposed as methods by the server</para>
363 <para>fixed: bad encoding if same object is encoded twice using
364 php_xmlrpc_encode</para>
366 </itemizedlist></para>
372 <para><emphasis>Note:</emphasis> this might the last release of the
373 library that will support PHP 4. Future releases (if any) should target
374 php 5.0 as minimum supported version.</para>
378 <para>fixed: encoding of utf-8 characters outside of the BMP
383 <para>fixed: character set declarations surrounded by double
384 quotes were not recognized in http headers</para>
388 <para>fixed: be more tolerant in detection of charset in http
393 <para>fixed: fix detection of zlib.output_compression</para>
397 <para>fixed: use feof() to test if socket connections are to be
398 closed instead of the number of bytes read (rare bug when
399 communicating with some servers)</para>
403 <para>fixed: format floating point values using the correct
404 decimal separator even when php locale is set to one that uses
409 <para>fixed: improve robustness of the debugger when parsing weird
410 results from non-compliant servers</para>
414 <para>php warning when receiving 'false' in a bool value</para>
418 <para>improved: allow the add_to_map server method to add docs for
419 single params too</para>
423 <para>improved: added the possibility to wrap for exposure as
424 xmlrpc methods plain php class methods, object methods and even
427 </itemizedlist></para>
435 <para>fixed: work aroung bug in php 5.2.2 which broke support of
436 HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA</para>
440 <para>fixed: is_dir parameter of setCaCertificate() method is
445 <para>fixed: a php warning in xmlrpc_client creator method</para>
449 <para>fixed: parsing of '1e+1' as valid float</para>
453 <para>fixed: allow errorlevel 3 to work when prev. error handler was
454 a static method</para>
458 <para>fixed: usage of client::setcookie() for multiple cookies in
463 <para>improved: support for CP1252 charset is not part or the
464 library but almost possible</para>
468 <para>improved: more info when curl is enabled and debug mode is
479 <para>fixed: debugger errors on php installs with magic_quotes_gpc
484 <para>fixed: support for https connections via proxy</para>
488 <para>fixed: wrap_xmlrpc_method() generated code failed to properly
489 encode php objects</para>
493 <para>improved: slightly faster encoding of data which is internally
498 <para>improved: debugger always generates a 'null' id for jsonrpc if
503 <para>new: debugger can take advantage of a graphical value builder
504 (it has to be downloaded separately, as part of jsxmlrpc package.
505 See Appendix D for more details)</para>
509 <para>new: support for the <NIL/> xmlrpc extension. see below
510 for more details</para>
514 <para>new: server support for the system.getCapabilities xmlrpc
519 <para>new: <function><link
520 linkend="wrap_xmlrpc_method">wrap_xmlrpc_method()</link></function>
521 accepts two new options: debug and return_on_fault</para>
531 <para>The <function>wrap_php_function</function> and
532 <function>wrap_xmlrpc_method</function> functions have been moved
533 out of the base library file <filename>xmlrpc.inc</filename> into
534 a file of their own: <filename>xmlrpc_wrappers.inc</filename>. You
535 will have to include() / require() it in your scripts if you have
536 been using those functions. For increased security, the automatic
537 rebuilding of php object instances out of received xmlrpc structs
538 in <function>wrap_xmlrpc_method()</function> has been disabled
539 (but it can be optionally re-enabled). Both
540 <function>wrap_php_function()</function> and
541 <function>wrap_xmlrpc_method()</function> functions accept many
542 more options to fine tune their behaviour, including one to return
543 the php code to be saved and later used as standalone php
548 <para>The constructor of xmlrpcval() values has seen some internal
549 changes, and it will not throw a php warning anymore when invoked
550 using an unknown xmlrpc type: the error will only be written to
551 php error log. Also <code>new xmlrpcval('true', 'boolean')</code>
552 is not supported anymore</para>
556 <para>The new function
557 <function>php_xmlrpc_decode_xml()</function> will take the xml
558 representation of either an xmlrpc request, response or single
559 value and return the corresponding php-xmlrpc object
564 <para>A new function <function>wrap_xmlrpc_server()</function>has
565 been added, to wrap all (or some) of the methods exposed by a
566 remote xmlrpc server into a php class</para>
570 <para>A new file has been added:
571 <filename>verify_compat.php</filename>, to help users diagnose the
572 level of compliance of their php installation with the
577 <para>Restored compatibility with php 4.0.5 (for those poor souls
578 still stuck on it)</para>
582 <para>Method <methodname>xmlrpc_server->service()</methodname>
583 now returns a value: either the response payload or xmlrpcresp
584 object instance</para>
589 <methodname>xmlrpc_server->add_to_map()</methodname> now
590 accepts xmlrpc methods with no param definitions</para>
594 <para>Documentation for single parameters of exposed methods can
595 be added to the dispatch map (and turned into html docs in
596 conjunction with a future release of the 'extras' package)</para>
600 <para>Full response payload is saved into xmlrpcresp object for
601 further debugging</para>
605 <para>The debugger can now generate code that wraps a remote
606 method into a php function (works for jsonrpc, too); it also has
607 better support for being activated via a single GET call (e.g. for
608 integration into other tools)</para>
612 <para>Stricter parsing of incoming xmlrpc messages: two more
613 invalid cases are now detected (double <literal>data</literal>
614 element inside <literal>array</literal> and
615 <literal>struct</literal>/<literal>array</literal> after scalar
616 inside <literal>value</literal> element)</para>
620 <para>More logging of errors in a lot of situations</para>
624 <para>Javadoc documentation of lib files (almost) complete</para>
628 <para>Many performance tweaks and code cleanups, plus the usual
629 crop of bugs fixed (see NEWS file for complete list of
634 <para>Lib internals have been modified to provide better support
635 for grafting extra functionality on top of it. Stay tuned for
636 future releases of the EXTRAS package (or go read Appendix
639 </itemizedlist></para>
643 <title>2.0 final</title>
647 <para>Added to the client class the possibility to use Digest and
648 NTLM authentication methods (when using the CURL library) for
649 connecting to servers and NTLM for connecting to proxies</para>
653 <para>Added to the client class the possibility to specify
654 alternate certificate files/directories for authenticating the
655 peer with when using HTTPS communication</para>
659 <para>Reviewed all examples and added a new demo file, containing
660 a proxy to forward xmlrpc requests to other servers (useful e.g.
661 for ajax coding)</para>
665 <para>The debugger has been upgraded to reflect the new client
670 <para>All known bugs have been squashed, and the lib is more
671 tolerant than ever of commonly-found mistakes</para>
673 </itemizedlist></para>
677 <title>2.0 Release candidate 3</title>
681 <para>Added to server class the property
682 <property>functions_parameters_type</property>, that allows the
683 server to register plain php functions as xmlrpc methods (i.e.
684 functions that do not take an xmlrpcmsg object as unique
689 <para>let server and client objects serialize calls using a
690 specified character set encoding for the produced xml instead of
691 US-ASCII (ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 supported)</para>
695 <para>let php_xmlrpc_decode accept xmlrpcmsg objects as valid
700 <para>'class::method' syntax is now accepted in the server
705 <para><function>xmlrpc_clent::SetDebug()</function> accepts
706 integer values instead of a boolean value, with debugging level 2
707 adding to the information printed to screen the complete client
710 </itemizedlist></para>
714 <title>2.0 Release candidate 2</title>
718 <para>Added a new property of the client object:
719 <code>xmlrpc_client->return_type</code>, indicating whether
720 calls to the send() method will return xmlrpcresp objects whose
721 value() is an xmlrpcval object, a php value (automatically
722 decoded) or the raw xml received from the server.</para>
726 <para>Added in the extras dir. two new library file:
727 <filename>jsonrpc.inc</filename> and
728 <filename>jsonrpcs.inc</filename> containing new classes that
729 implement support for the json-rpc protocol (alpha quality
734 <para>Added a new client method: <code>setKey($key,
735 $keypass)</code> to be used in HTTPS connections</para>
739 <para>Added a new file containing some benchmarks in the testsuite
742 </itemizedlist></para>
746 <title>2.0 Release candidate 1</title>
750 <para>Support for HTTP proxies (new method:
751 <code>xmlrpc_client::setProxy()</code>)</para>
755 <para>Support HTTP compression of both requests and responses.
756 Clients can specify what kind of compression they accept for
757 responses between deflate/gzip/any, and whether to compress the
758 requests. Servers by default compress responses to clients that
759 explicitly declare support for compression (new methods:
760 <code>xmlrpc_client::setAcceptedCompression()</code>,
761 <code>xmlrpc_client::setRequestCompression()</code>). Note that the
762 ZLIB php extension needs to be enabled in PHP to support
767 <para>Implement HTTP 1.1 connections, but only if CURL is enabled
768 (added an extra parameter to
769 <code>xmlrpc_client::xmlrpc_client</code> to set the desired HTTP
770 protocol at creation time and a new supported value for the last
771 parameter of <code>xmlrpc_client::send</code>, which now can be
772 safely omitted if it has been specified at creation time)</para>
774 <para>With PHP versions greater than 4.3.8 keep-alives are enabled
775 by default for HTTP 1.1 connections. This should yield faster
776 execution times when making multiple calls in sequence to the same
777 xml-rpc server from a single client.</para>
781 <para>Introduce support for cookies. Cookies to be sent to the
782 server with a request can be set using
783 <code>xmlrpc_client::setCookie()</code>, while cookies received from
784 the server are found in <code>xmlrpcresp::cookies()</code>. It is
785 left to the user to check for validity of received cookies and
786 decide whether they apply to successive calls or not.</para>
790 <para>Better support for detecting different character set encodings
791 of xml-rpc requests and responses: both client and server objects
792 will correctly detect the charset encoding of received xml, and use
793 an appropriate xml parser.</para>
795 <para>Supported encodings are US-ASCII, UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1.</para>
799 <para>Added one new xmlrpcmsg constructor syntax, allowing usage of
800 a single string with the complete URL of the target server</para>
804 <para>Convert xml-rpc boolean values into native php values instead
809 <para>Force the <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> function to properly
810 encode numerically indexed php arrays into xml-rpc arrays
811 (numerically indexed php arrays always start with a key of 0 and
812 increment keys by values of 1)</para>
816 <para>Prevent the <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> function from
817 further re-encoding any objects of class <code>xmlrpcval</code> that
818 are passed to it. This allows to call the function with arguments
819 consisting of mixed php values / xmlrpcval objects.</para>
823 <para>Allow a server to NOT respond to system.* method calls
824 (setting the <code>$server->allow_system_funcs</code>
829 <para>Implement a new xmlrpcval method to determine if a value of
830 type struct has a member of a given name without having to loop
831 trough all members: <code>xmlrpcval::structMemExists()</code></para>
835 <para>Expand methods <code>xmlrpcval::addArray</code>,
836 <code>addScalar</code> and <code>addStruct</code> allowing extra php
837 values to be added to xmlrpcval objects already formed.</para>
841 <para>Let the <code>xmlrpc_client::send</code> method accept an XML
842 string for sending instead of an xmlrpcmsg object, to facilitate
843 debugging and integration with the php native xmlrpc
848 <para>Extend the <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> and
849 <code>php_xmlrpc_decode</code> functions to allow serialization and
850 rebuilding of PHP objects. To successfully rebuild a serialized
851 object, the object class must be defined in the deserializing end of
852 the transfer. Note that object members of type resource will be
853 deserialized as NULL values.</para>
855 <para>Note that his has been implemented adding a "php_class"
856 attribute to xml representation of xmlrpcval of STRUCT type, which,
857 strictly speaking, breaks the xml-rpc spec. Other xmlrpc
858 implementations are supposed to ignore such an attribute (unless
859 they implement a brain-dead custom xml parser...), so it should be
860 safe enabling it in heterogeneous environments. The activation of
861 this feature is done by usage of an option passed as second
862 parameter to both <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> and
863 <code>php_xmlrpc_decode</code>.</para>
867 <para>Extend the <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> function to allow
868 automatic serialization of iso8601-conforming php strings as
869 datetime.iso8601 xmlrpcvals, by usage of an optional
874 <para>Added an automatic stub code generator for converting xmlrpc
875 methods to php functions and vice-versa.</para>
877 <para>This is done via two new functions:
878 <code>wrap_php_function</code> and <code>wrap_xmlrpc_method</code>,
879 and has many caveats, with php being a typeless language and
882 <para>With PHP versions lesser than 5.0.3 wrapping of php functions
883 into xmlrpc methods is not supported yet.</para>
887 <para>Allow object methods to be used in server dispatch map</para>
891 <para>Added a complete debugger solution, in the
892 <filename>debugger</filename> folder</para>
896 <para>Added configurable server-side debug messages, controlled by
897 the new method <code>xmlrpc_server::SetDebug()</code>. At level 0,
898 no debug messages are sent to the client; level 1 is the same as the
899 old behaviour; at level 2 a lot more info is echoed back to the
900 client, regarding the received call; at level 3 all warnings raised
901 during server processing are trapped (this prevents breaking the xml
902 to be echoed back to the client) and added to the debug info sent
903 back to the client</para>
907 <para>New XML parsing code, yields smaller memory footprint and
908 faster execution times, not to mention complete elimination of the
909 dreaded <filename>eval()</filename> construct, so prone to code
910 injection exploits</para>
914 <para>Rewritten most of the error messages, making text more
921 <chapter id="requirements">
922 <title>System Requirements</title>
924 <para>The library has been designed with goals of scalability and backward
925 compatibility. As such, it supports a wide range of PHP installs. Note
926 that not all features of the lib are available in every
927 configuration.</para>
929 <para>The <emphasis>minimum supported</emphasis> PHP version is
932 <para>If you wish to use SSL or HTTP 1.1 to communicate with remote
933 servers, you need the "curl" extension compiled into your PHP
936 <para>The "xmlrpc" native extension is not required to be compiled into
937 your PHP installation, but if it is, there will be no interference with
938 the operation of this library.</para>
941 <chapter id="manifest">
942 <title>Files in the distribution</title>
946 <glossterm>lib/xmlrpc.inc</glossterm>
949 <para>the XML-RPC classes. <function>include()</function> this in
950 your PHP files to use the classes.</para>
955 <glossterm>lib/xmlrpcs.inc</glossterm>
958 <para>the XML-RPC server class. <function>include()</function> this
959 in addition to xmlrpc.inc to get server functionality</para>
964 <glossterm>lib/xmlrpc_wrappers.inc</glossterm>
967 <para>helper functions to "automagically" convert plain php
968 functions to xmlrpc services and vice versa</para>
973 <glossterm>demo/server/proxy.php</glossterm>
976 <para>a sample server implementing xmlrpc proxy
977 functionality.</para>
982 <glossterm>demo/server/server.php</glossterm>
985 <para>a sample server hosting various demo functions, as well as a
986 full suite of functions used for interoperability testing. It is
987 used by testsuite.php (see below) for unit testing the library, and
988 is not to be copied literally into your production servers</para>
993 <glossterm>demo/client/client.php, demo/client/agesort.php,
994 demo/client/which.php</glossterm>
997 <para>client code to exercise some of the functions in server.php,
998 including the <function>interopEchoTests.whichToolkit</function>
1004 <glossterm>demo/client/wrap.php</glossterm>
1007 <para>client code to illustrate 'wrapping' of remote methods into
1008 php functions.</para>
1013 <glossterm>demo/client/introspect.php</glossterm>
1016 <para>client code to illustrate usage of introspection capabilities
1017 offered by server.php.</para>
1022 <glossterm>demo/client/mail.php</glossterm>
1025 <para>client code to illustrate usage of an xmlrpc-to-email gateway
1026 using Dave Winer's XML-RPC server at userland.com.</para>
1031 <glossterm>demo/client/zopetest.php</glossterm>
1034 <para>example client code that queries an xmlrpc server built in
1040 <glossterm>demo/vardemo.php</glossterm>
1043 <para>examples of how to construct xmlrpcval types</para>
1048 <glossterm>demo/demo1.txt, demo/demo2.txt, demo/demo3.txt</glossterm>
1051 <para>XML-RPC responses captured in a file for testing purposes (you
1052 can use these to test the
1053 <function>xmlrpcmsg->parseResponse()</function> method).</para>
1058 <glossterm>demo/server/discuss.php,
1059 demo/client/comment.php</glossterm>
1062 <para>Software used in the PHP chapter of <xref
1063 linkend="jellyfish" /> to provide a comment server and allow the
1064 attachment of comments to stories from Meerkat's data store.</para>
1069 <glossterm>test/testsuite.php, test/parse_args.php</glossterm>
1072 <para>A unit test suite for this software package. If you do
1073 development on this software, please consider submitting tests for
1079 <glossterm>test/benchmark.php</glossterm>
1082 <para>A (very limited) benchmarking suite for this software package.
1083 If you do development on this software, please consider submitting
1084 benchmarks for this suite.</para>
1089 <glossterm>test/phpunit.php, test/PHPUnit/*.php</glossterm>
1092 <para>An (incomplete) version PEAR's unit test framework for PHP.
1093 The complete package can be found at <ulink
1094 url="http://pear.php.net/package/PHPUnit">http://pear.php.net/package/PHPUnit</ulink></para>
1099 <glossterm>test/verify_compat.php</glossterm>
1102 <para>Script designed to help the user to verify the level of
1103 compatibility of the library with the current php install</para>
1108 <glossterm>extras/test.pl, extras/test.py</glossterm>
1111 <para>Perl and Python programs to exercise server.php to test that
1112 some of the methods work.</para>
1117 <glossterm>extras/workspace.testPhpServer.fttb</glossterm>
1120 <para>Frontier scripts to exercise the demo server. Thanks to Dave
1121 Winer for permission to include these. See <ulink
1122 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/discuss/msgReader$853">Dave's
1123 announcement of these.</ulink></para>
1128 <glossterm>extras/rsakey.pem</glossterm>
1131 <para>A test certificate key for the SSL support, which can be used
1132 to generate dummy certificates. It has the passphrase "test."</para>
1139 <title>Known bugs and limitations</title>
1141 <para>This started out as a bare framework. Many "nice" bits haven't been
1142 put in yet. Specifically, very little type validation or coercion has been
1143 put in. PHP being a loosely-typed language, this is going to have to be
1144 done explicitly (in other words: you can call a lot of library functions
1145 passing them arguments of the wrong type and receive an error message only
1146 much further down the code, where it will be difficult to
1149 <para>dateTime.iso8601 is supported opaquely. It can't be done natively as
1150 the XML-RPC specification explicitly forbids passing of timezone
1151 specifiers in ISO8601 format dates. You can, however, use the <xref
1152 linkend="iso8601encode" /> and <xref linkend="iso8601decode" /> functions
1153 to do the encoding and decoding for you.</para>
1155 <para>Very little HTTP response checking is performed (e.g. HTTP redirects
1156 are not followed and the Content-Length HTTP header, mandated by the
1157 xml-rpc spec, is not validated); cookie support still involves quite a bit
1158 of coding on the part of the user.</para>
1160 <para>If a specific character set encoding other than US-ASCII, ISO-8859-1
1161 or UTF-8 is received in the HTTP header or XML prologue of xml-rpc request
1162 or response messages then it will be ignored for the moment, and the
1163 content will be parsed as if it had been encoded using the charset defined
1164 by <xref linkend="xmlrpc-defencoding" /></para>
1166 <para>Support for receiving from servers version 1 cookies (i.e.
1167 conforming to RFC 2965) is quite incomplete, and might cause unforeseen
1171 <chapter id="support">
1172 <title>Support</title>
1175 <title>Online Support</title>
1177 <para>XML-RPC for PHP is offered "as-is" without any warranty or
1178 commitment to support. However, informal advice and help is available
1179 via the XML-RPC for PHP website and mailing list and from
1184 <para>The <emphasis>XML-RPC for PHP</emphasis> development is hosted
1186 url="https://github.com/gggeek/phpxmlrpc">github.com/gggeek/phpxmlrpc</ulink>.
1187 Bugs, feature requests and patches can be posted to the <ulink
1188 url="https://github.com/gggeek/phpxmlrpc/issues">project's
1189 website</ulink>.</para>
1193 <para>The <emphasis>PHP XML-RPC interest mailing list</emphasis> is
1194 run by the author. More details <ulink
1195 url="http://lists.gnomehack.com/mailman/listinfo/phpxmlrpc">can be
1196 found here</ulink>.</para>
1200 <para>For more general XML-RPC questions, there is a Yahoo! Groups
1201 <ulink url="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xml-rpc/">XML-RPC mailing
1202 list</ulink>.</para>
1207 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/discuss">XML-RPC.com</ulink> discussion
1208 group is a useful place to get help with using XML-RPC. This group
1209 is also gatewayed into the Yahoo! Groups mailing list.</para>
1214 <sect1 id="jellyfish" xreflabel="The Jellyfish Book">
1215 <title>The Jellyfish Book</title>
1217 <para><graphic align="right" depth="190" fileref="progxmlrpc.s.gif"
1218 format="GIF" width="145" />Together with Simon St.Laurent and Joe
1219 Johnston, Edd Dumbill wrote a book on XML-RPC for O'Reilly and
1220 Associates on XML-RPC. It features a rather fetching jellyfish on the
1223 <para>Complete details of the book are <ulink
1224 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progxmlrpc/">available from
1225 O'Reilly's web site.</ulink></para>
1227 <para>Edd is responsible for the chapter on PHP, which includes a worked
1228 example of creating a forum server, and hooking it up the O'Reilly's
1229 <ulink url="http://meerkat.oreillynet.com/">Meerkat</ulink> service in
1230 order to allow commenting on news stories from around the Web.</para>
1232 <para>If you've benefited from the effort that has been put into writing
1233 this software, then please consider buying the book!</para>
1237 <chapter id="apidocs">
1238 <title>Class documentation</title>
1240 <sect1 id="xmlrpcval" xreflabel="xmlrpcval">
1241 <title>xmlrpcval</title>
1243 <para>This is where a lot of the hard work gets done. This class enables
1244 the creation and encapsulation of values for XML-RPC.</para>
1246 <para>Ensure you've read the XML-RPC spec at <ulink
1247 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/stories/storyReader$7">http://www.xmlrpc.com/stories/storyReader$7</ulink>
1248 before reading on as it will make things clearer.</para>
1250 <para>The <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> class can store arbitrarily
1251 complicated values using the following types: <literal>i4 int boolean
1252 string double dateTime.iso8601 base64 array struct</literal>
1253 <literal>null</literal>. You should refer to the <ulink
1254 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/spec">spec</ulink> for more information on
1255 what each of these types mean.</para>
1258 <title>Notes on types</title>
1263 <para>The type <classname>i4</classname> is accepted as a synonym
1264 for <classname>int</classname> when creating xmlrpcval objects. The
1265 xml parsing code will always convert <classname>i4</classname> to
1266 <classname>int</classname>: <classname>int</classname> is regarded
1267 by this implementation as the canonical name for this type.</para>
1271 <title>base64</title>
1273 <para>Base 64 encoding is performed transparently to the caller when
1274 using this type. Decoding is also transparent. Therefore you ought
1275 to consider it as a "binary" data type, for use when you want to
1276 pass data that is not 7-bit clean.</para>
1280 <title>boolean</title>
1282 <para>The php values <literal>true</literal> and
1283 <literal>1</literal> map to <literal>true</literal>. All other
1284 values (including the empty string) are converted to
1285 <literal>false</literal>.</para>
1289 <title>string</title>
1291 <para>Characters <, >, ', ", &, are encoded using their
1292 entity reference as &lt; &gt; &apos; &quot; and
1293 &amp; All other characters outside of the ASCII range are
1294 encoded using their character reference representation (e.g.
1295 &#200 for é). The XML-RPC spec recommends only encoding
1296 <literal>< &</literal> but this implementation goes further,
1297 for reasons explained by <ulink
1298 url="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#syntax">the XML 1.0
1299 recommendation</ulink>. In particular, using character reference
1300 representation has the advantage of producing XML that is valid
1301 independently of the charset encoding assumed.</para>
1307 <para>There is no support for encoding <literal>null</literal>
1308 values in the XML-RPC spec, but at least a couple of extensions (and
1309 many toolkits) do support it. Before using <literal>null</literal>
1310 values in your messages, make sure that the responding party accepts
1311 them, and uses the same encoding convention (see ...).</para>
1315 <sect2 id="xmlrpcval-creation" xreflabel="xmlrpcval constructors">
1316 <title>Creation</title>
1318 <para>The constructor is the normal way to create an
1319 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname>. The constructor can take these
1324 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type>new
1325 <function>xmlrpcval</function></funcdef>
1331 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type>new
1332 <function>xmlrpcval</function></funcdef>
1334 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$stringVal</parameter></paramdef>
1338 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type>new
1339 <function>xmlrpcval</function></funcdef>
1341 <paramdef><type>mixed</type><parameter>$scalarVal</parameter></paramdef>
1343 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$scalartyp</parameter></paramdef>
1347 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type>new
1348 <function>xmlrpcval</function></funcdef>
1350 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$arrayVal</parameter></paramdef>
1352 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$arraytyp</parameter></paramdef>
1356 <para>The first constructor creates an empty value, which must be
1357 altered using the methods <function>addScalar</function>,
1358 <function>addArray</function> or <function>addStruct</function> before
1359 it can be used.</para>
1361 <para>The second constructor creates a simple string value.</para>
1363 <para>The third constructor is used to create a scalar value. The
1364 second parameter must be a name of an XML-RPC type. Valid types are:
1365 "<literal>int</literal>", "<literal>boolean</literal>",
1366 "<literal>string</literal>", "<literal>double</literal>",
1367 "<literal>dateTime.iso8601</literal>", "<literal>base64</literal>" or
1370 <para>Examples:</para>
1372 <programlisting language="php">
1373 $myInt = new xmlrpcvalue(1267, "int");
1374 $myString = new xmlrpcvalue("Hello, World!", "string");
1375 $myBool = new xmlrpcvalue(1, "boolean");
1376 $myString2 = new xmlrpcvalue(1.24, "string"); // note: this will serialize a php float value as xmlrpc string
1379 <para>The fourth constructor form can be used to compose complex
1380 XML-RPC values. The first argument is either a simple array in the
1381 case of an XML-RPC <classname>array</classname> or an associative
1382 array in the case of a <classname>struct</classname>. The elements of
1383 the array <emphasis>must be <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects
1384 themselves</emphasis>.</para>
1386 <para>The second parameter must be either "<literal>array</literal>"
1387 or "<literal>struct</literal>".</para>
1389 <para>Examples:</para>
1391 <programlisting language="php">
1392 $myArray = new xmlrpcval(
1394 new xmlrpcval("Tom"),
1395 new xmlrpcval("Dick"),
1396 new xmlrpcval("Harry")
1401 $myStruct = new xmlrpcval(
1403 "name" => new xmlrpcval("Tom", "string"),
1404 "age" => new xmlrpcval(34, "int"),
1405 "address" => new xmlrpcval(
1407 "street" => new xmlrpcval("Fifht Ave", "string"),
1408 "city" => new xmlrpcval("NY", "string")
1415 <para>See the file <literal>vardemo.php</literal> in this distribution
1416 for more examples.</para>
1419 <sect2 id="xmlrpcval-methods" xreflabel="xmlrpcval methods">
1420 <title>Methods</title>
1423 <title>addScalar</title>
1427 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>addScalar</function></funcdef>
1429 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$stringVal</parameter></paramdef>
1433 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>addScalar</function></funcdef>
1435 <paramdef><type>mixed</type><parameter>$scalarVal</parameter></paramdef>
1437 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$scalartyp</parameter></paramdef>
1441 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an empty
1442 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> this method makes it a scalar
1443 value, and sets that value.</para>
1445 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is already a scalar value, then
1446 no more scalars can be added and <literal>0</literal> is
1449 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an xmlrpcval of type array,
1450 the php value <parameter>$scalarval</parameter> is added as its last
1453 <para>If all went OK, <literal>1</literal> is returned, otherwise
1454 <literal>0</literal>.</para>
1458 <title>addArray</title>
1462 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>addArray</function></funcdef>
1464 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$arrayVal</parameter></paramdef>
1468 <para>The argument is a simple (numerically indexed) array. The
1469 elements of the array <emphasis>must be
1470 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects
1471 themselves</emphasis>.</para>
1473 <para>Turns an empty <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> into an
1474 <classname>array</classname> with contents as specified by
1475 <parameter>$arrayVal</parameter>.</para>
1477 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an xmlrpcval of type array,
1478 the elements of <parameter>$arrayVal</parameter> are appended to the
1479 existing ones.</para>
1481 <para>See the fourth constructor form for more information.</para>
1483 <para>If all went OK, <literal>1</literal> is returned, otherwise
1484 <literal>0</literal>.</para>
1488 <title>addStruct</title>
1492 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>addStruct</function></funcdef>
1494 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$assocArrayVal</parameter></paramdef>
1498 <para>The argument is an associative array. The elements of the
1499 array <emphasis>must be <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects
1500 themselves</emphasis>.</para>
1502 <para>Turns an empty <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> into a
1503 <classname>struct</classname> with contents as specified by
1504 <parameter>$assocArrayVal</parameter>.</para>
1506 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an xmlrpcval of type struct,
1507 the elements of <parameter>$arrayVal</parameter> are merged with the
1508 existing ones.</para>
1510 <para>See the fourth constructor form for more information.</para>
1512 <para>If all went OK, <literal>1</literal> is returned, otherwise
1513 <literal>0</literal>.</para>
1517 <title>kindOf</title>
1521 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>kindOf</function></funcdef>
1527 <para>Returns a string containing "struct", "array" or "scalar"
1528 describing the base type of the value. If it returns "undef" it
1529 means that the value hasn't been initialised.</para>
1533 <title>serialize</title>
1537 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>serialize</function></funcdef>
1543 <para>Returns a string containing the XML-RPC representation of this
1548 <title>scalarVal</title>
1552 <funcdef><type>mixed</type><function>scalarVal</function></funcdef>
1558 <para>If <function>$val->kindOf() == "scalar"</function>, this
1559 method returns the actual PHP-language value of the scalar (base 64
1560 decoding is automatically handled here).</para>
1564 <title>scalarTyp</title>
1568 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>scalarTyp</function></funcdef>
1574 <para>If <function>$val->kindOf() == "scalar"</function>, this
1575 method returns a string denoting the type of the scalar. As
1576 mentioned before, <literal>i4</literal> is always coerced to
1577 <literal>int</literal>.</para>
1581 <title>arrayMem</title>
1585 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>arrayMem</function></funcdef>
1587 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$n</parameter></paramdef>
1591 <para>If <function>$val->kindOf() == "array"</function>, returns
1592 the <parameter>$n</parameter>th element in the array represented by
1593 the value <parameter>$val</parameter>. The value returned is an
1594 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> object.</para>
1596 <para><programlisting language="php">
1597 // iterating over values of an array object
1598 for ($i = 0; $i < $val->arraySize(); $i++)
1600 $v = $val->arrayMem($i);
1601 echo "Element $i of the array is of type ".$v->kindOf();
1603 </programlisting></para>
1607 <title>arraySize</title>
1611 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>arraySize</function></funcdef>
1617 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an
1618 <classname>array</classname>, returns the number of elements in that
1623 <title>structMem</title>
1627 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>structMem</function></funcdef>
1629 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$memberName</parameter></paramdef>
1633 <para>If <function>$val->kindOf() == "struct"</function>, returns
1634 the element called <parameter>$memberName</parameter> from the
1635 struct represented by the value <parameter>$val</parameter>. The
1636 value returned is an <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> object.</para>
1640 <title>structEach</title>
1644 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>structEach</function></funcdef>
1650 <para>Returns the next (key, value) pair from the struct, when
1651 <parameter>$val</parameter> is a struct.
1652 <parameter>$value</parameter> is an xmlrpcval itself. See also <xref
1653 linkend="structreset" />.</para>
1655 <para><programlisting language="php">
1656 // iterating over all values of a struct object
1657 $val->structreset();
1658 while (list($key, $v) = $val->structEach())
1660 echo "Element $key of the struct is of type ".$v->kindOf();
1662 </programlisting></para>
1665 <sect3 id="structreset" xreflabel="structreset()">
1666 <title>structReset</title>
1670 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>structReset</function></funcdef>
1676 <para>Resets the internal pointer for
1677 <function>structEach()</function> to the beginning of the struct,
1678 where <parameter>$val</parameter> is a struct.</para>
1681 <sect3 id="structmemexists" xreflabel="structmemexists()">
1682 <title>structMemExists</title>
1686 <funcdef><type>bool</type><function>structMemExsists</function></funcdef>
1688 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$memberName</parameter></paramdef>
1692 <para>Returns <constant>TRUE</constant> or
1693 <constant>FALSE</constant> depending on whether a member of the
1694 given name exists in the struct.</para>
1699 <sect1 id="xmlrpcmsg" xreflabel="xmlrpcmsg">
1700 <title>xmlrpcmsg</title>
1702 <para>This class provides a representation for a request to an XML-RPC
1703 server. A client sends an <classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname> to a server,
1704 and receives back an <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> (see <xref
1705 linkend="xmlrpc-client-send" />).</para>
1708 <title>Creation</title>
1710 <para>The constructor takes the following forms:</para>
1714 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcmsg</type>new
1715 <function>xmlrpcmsg</function></funcdef>
1717 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$methodName</parameter></paramdef>
1719 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$parameterArray</parameter><initializer>null</initializer></paramdef>
1723 <para>Where <parameter>methodName</parameter> is a string indicating
1724 the name of the method you wish to invoke, and
1725 <parameter>parameterArray</parameter> is a simple php
1726 <classname>Array</classname> of <classname>xmlrpcval</classname>
1727 objects. Here's an example message to the <emphasis>US state
1728 name</emphasis> server:</para>
1730 <programlisting language="php">
1731 $msg = new xmlrpcmsg("examples.getStateName", array(new xmlrpcval(23, "int")));
1734 <para>This example requests the name of state number 23. For more
1735 information on <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects, see <xref
1736 linkend="xmlrpcval" />.</para>
1738 <para>Note that the <parameter>parameterArray</parameter> parameter is
1739 optional and can be omitted for methods that take no input parameters
1740 or if you plan to add parameters one by one.</para>
1744 <title>Methods</title>
1747 <title>addParam</title>
1751 <funcdef><type>bool</type><function>addParam</function></funcdef>
1753 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><parameter>$xmlrpcVal</parameter></paramdef>
1757 <para>Adds the <classname>xmlrpcval</classname>
1758 <parameter>xmlrpcVal</parameter> to the parameter list for this
1759 method call. Returns TRUE or FALSE on error.</para>
1763 <title>getNumParams</title>
1767 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>getNumParams</function></funcdef>
1773 <para>Returns the number of parameters attached to this
1778 <title>getParam</title>
1782 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>getParam</function></funcdef>
1784 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$n</parameter></paramdef>
1788 <para>Gets the <parameter>n</parameter>th parameter in the message
1789 (with the index zero-based). Use this method in server
1790 implementations to retrieve the values sent by the client.</para>
1794 <title>method</title>
1798 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>method</function></funcdef>
1804 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>method</function></funcdef>
1806 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$methName</parameter></paramdef>
1810 <para>Gets or sets the method contained in the XML-RPC
1815 <title>parseResponse</title>
1819 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type><function>parseResponse</function></funcdef>
1821 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$xmlString</parameter></paramdef>
1825 <para>Given an incoming XML-RPC server response contained in the
1826 string <parameter>$xmlString</parameter>, this method constructs an
1827 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> response object and returns it,
1828 setting error codes as appropriate (see <xref
1829 linkend="xmlrpc-client-send" />).</para>
1831 <para>This method processes any HTTP/MIME headers it finds.</para>
1835 <title>parseResponseFile</title>
1839 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type><function>parseResponseFile</function></funcdef>
1841 <paramdef><type>file handle
1842 resource</type><parameter>$fileHandle</parameter></paramdef>
1846 <para>Given an incoming XML-RPC server response on the open file
1847 handle <parameter>fileHandle</parameter>, this method reads all the
1848 data it finds and passes it to
1849 <function>parseResponse.</function></para>
1851 <para>This method is useful to construct responses from pre-prepared
1852 files (see files <literal>demo1.txt, demo2.txt, demo3.txt</literal>
1853 in this distribution). It processes any HTTP headers it finds, and
1854 does not close the file handle.</para>
1858 <title>serialize</title>
1862 <funcdef><type>string
1863 </type><function>serialize</function></funcdef>
1869 <para>Returns the an XML string representing the XML-RPC
1875 <sect1 id="xmlrpc-client" xreflabel="xmlrpc_client">
1876 <title>xmlrpc_client</title>
1878 <para>This is the basic class used to represent a client of an XML-RPC
1882 <title>Creation</title>
1884 <para>The constructor accepts one of two possible syntaxes:</para>
1888 <funcdef><type>xmlrpc_client</type>new
1889 <function>xmlrpc_client</function></funcdef>
1891 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$server_url</parameter></paramdef>
1895 <funcdef><type>xmlrpc_client</type>new
1896 <function>xmlrpc_client</function></funcdef>
1898 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$server_path</parameter></paramdef>
1900 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$server_hostname</parameter></paramdef>
1902 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$server_port</parameter><initializer>80</initializer></paramdef>
1904 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter><initializer>'http'</initializer></paramdef>
1908 <para>Here are a couple of usage examples of the first form:</para>
1910 <programlisting language="php">
1911 $client = new xmlrpc_client("http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/server.php");
1912 $another_client = new xmlrpc_client("https://james:bond@secret.service.com:443/xmlrpcserver?agent=007");
1915 <para>The second syntax does not allow to express a username and
1916 password to be used for basic HTTP authorization as in the second
1917 example above, but instead it allows to choose whether xmlrpc calls
1918 will be made using the HTTP 1.0 or 1.1 protocol.</para>
1920 <para>Here's another example client set up to query Userland's XML-RPC
1921 server at <emphasis>betty.userland.com</emphasis>:</para>
1923 <programlisting language="php">
1924 $client = new xmlrpc_client("/RPC2", "betty.userland.com", 80);
1927 <para>The <parameter>server_port</parameter> parameter is optional,
1928 and if omitted will default to 80 when using HTTP and 443 when using
1929 HTTPS (see the <xref linkend="xmlrpc-client-send" /> method
1932 <para>The <parameter>transport</parameter> parameter is optional, and
1933 if omitted will default to 'http'. Allowed values are either
1934 '<symbol>http'</symbol>, '<symbol>https</symbol>' or
1935 '<symbol>http11'</symbol>. Its value can be overridden with every call
1936 to the <methodname>send</methodname> method. See the
1937 <methodname>send</methodname> method below for more details about the
1938 meaning of the different values.</para>
1942 <title>Methods</title>
1944 <para>This class supports the following methods.</para>
1946 <sect3 id="xmlrpc-client-send" xreflabel="xmlrpc_client->send">
1949 <para>This method takes the forms:</para>
1953 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type><function>send</function></funcdef>
1955 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcmsg</type><parameter>$xmlrpc_message</parameter></paramdef>
1957 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$timeout</parameter></paramdef>
1959 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter></paramdef>
1963 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>send</function></funcdef>
1965 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$xmlrpc_messages</parameter></paramdef>
1967 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$timeout</parameter></paramdef>
1969 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter></paramdef>
1973 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type><function>send</function></funcdef>
1975 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$xml_payload</parameter></paramdef>
1977 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$timeout</parameter></paramdef>
1979 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter></paramdef>
1983 <para>Where <parameter>xmlrpc_message</parameter> is an instance of
1984 <classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname> (see <xref linkend="xmlrpcmsg" />),
1985 and <parameter>response</parameter> is an instance of
1986 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> (see <xref
1987 linkend="xmlrpcresp" />).</para>
1989 <para><parameter>If xmlrpc_messages</parameter> is an array of
1990 message instances, <code>responses</code> will be an array of
1991 response instances. The client will try to make use of a single
1992 <code>system.multicall</code> xml-rpc method call to forward to the
1993 server all the messages in a single HTTP round trip, unless
1994 <code>$client->no_multicall</code> has been previously set to
1995 <code>TRUE</code> (see the multicall method below), in which case
1996 many consecutive xmlrpc requests will be sent.</para>
1998 <para>The third syntax allows to build by hand (or any other means)
1999 a complete xmlrpc request message, and send it to the server.
2000 <parameter>xml_payload</parameter> should be a string containing the
2001 complete xml representation of the request. It is e.g. useful when,
2002 for maximal speed of execution, the request is serialized into a
2003 string using the native php xmlrpc functions (see <ulink
2004 url="http://www.php.net/xmlrpc">the php manual on
2005 xmlrpc</ulink>).</para>
2007 <para>The <parameter>timeout</parameter> is optional, and will be
2008 set to <literal>0</literal> (wait for platform-specific predefined
2009 timeout) if omitted. This timeout value is passed to
2010 <function>fsockopen()</function>. It is also used for detecting
2011 server timeouts during communication (i.e. if the server does not
2012 send anything to the client for <parameter>timeout</parameter>
2013 seconds, the connection will be closed).</para>
2015 <para>The <parameter>transport</parameter> parameter is optional,
2016 and if omitted will default to the transport set using instance
2017 creator or 'http' if omitted. The only other valid values are
2018 'https', which will use an SSL HTTP connection to connect to the
2019 remote server, and 'http11'. Note that your PHP must have the "curl"
2020 extension compiled in order to use both these features. Note that
2021 when using SSL you should normally set your port number to 443,
2022 unless the SSL server you are contacting runs at any other
2026 <para>PHP 4.0.6 has a bug which prevents SSL working.</para>
2029 <para>In addition to low-level errors, the XML-RPC server you were
2030 querying may return an error in the
2031 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> object. See <xref
2032 linkend="xmlrpcresp" /> for details of how to handle these
2036 <sect3 id="multicall" xreflabel="xmlrpc_client->multicall">
2037 <title>multiCall</title>
2039 <para>This method takes the form:</para>
2043 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>multiCall</function></funcdef>
2045 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$messages</parameter></paramdef>
2047 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$timeout</parameter></paramdef>
2049 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter></paramdef>
2051 <paramdef><type>bool</type><parameter>$fallback</parameter></paramdef>
2055 <para>This method is used to boxcar many method calls in a single
2056 xml-rpc request. It will try first to make use of the
2057 <code>system.multicall</code> xml-rpc method call, and fall back to
2058 executing many separate requests if the server returns any
2061 <para><parameter>msgs</parameter> is an array of
2062 <classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname> objects (see <xref
2063 linkend="xmlrpcmsg" />), and <parameter>response</parameter> is an
2064 array of <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> objects (see <xref
2065 linkend="xmlrpcresp" />).</para>
2067 <para>The <parameter>timeout</parameter> and
2068 <parameter>transport</parameter> parameters are optional, and behave
2069 as in the <methodname>send</methodname> method above.</para>
2071 <para>The <parameter>fallback</parameter> parameter is optional, and
2072 defaults to <constant>TRUE</constant>. When set to
2073 <constant>FALSE</constant> it will prevent the client to try using
2074 many single method calls in case of failure of the first multicall
2075 request. It should be set only when the server is known to support
2076 the multicall extension.</para>
2080 <title>setAcceptedCompression</title>
2084 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setAcceptedCompression</function></funcdef>
2086 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$compressionmethod</parameter></paramdef>
2090 <para>This method defines whether the client will accept compressed
2091 xml payload forming the bodies of the xmlrpc responses received from
2092 servers. Note that enabling reception of compressed responses merely
2093 adds some standard http headers to xmlrpc requests. It is up to the
2094 xmlrpc server to return compressed responses when receiving such
2095 requests. Allowed values for
2096 <parameter>compressionmethod</parameter> are: 'gzip', 'deflate',
2097 'any' or null (with any meaning either gzip or deflate).</para>
2099 <para>This requires the "zlib" extension to be enabled in your php
2100 install. If it is, by default <classname>xmlrpc_client</classname>
2101 instances will enable reception of compressed content.</para>
2105 <title>setCaCertificate</title>
2109 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCaCertificate</function></funcdef>
2111 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$certificate</parameter></paramdef>
2113 <paramdef><type>bool</type><parameter>$is_dir</parameter></paramdef>
2117 <para>This method sets an optional certificate to be used in
2118 SSL-enabled communication to validate a remote server with (when the
2119 <parameter>server_method</parameter> is set to 'https' in the
2120 client's construction or in the send method and
2121 <methodname>SetSSLVerifypeer</methodname> has been set to
2122 <constant>TRUE</constant>).</para>
2124 <para>The <parameter>certificate</parameter> parameter must be the
2125 filename of a PEM formatted certificate, or a directory containing
2126 multiple certificate files. The <parameter>is_dir</parameter>
2127 parameter defaults to <constant>FALSE</constant>, set it to
2128 <constant>TRUE</constant> to specify that
2129 <parameter>certificate</parameter> indicates a directory instead of
2130 a single file.</para>
2132 <para>This requires the "curl" extension to be compiled into your
2133 installation of PHP. For more details see the man page for the
2134 <function>curl_setopt</function> function.</para>
2138 <title>setCertificate</title>
2142 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCertificate</function></funcdef>
2144 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$certificate</parameter></paramdef>
2146 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$passphrase</parameter></paramdef>
2150 <para>This method sets the optional certificate and passphrase used
2151 in SSL-enabled communication with a remote server (when the
2152 <parameter>server_method</parameter> is set to 'https' in the
2153 client's construction or in the send method).</para>
2155 <para>The <parameter>certificate</parameter> parameter must be the
2156 filename of a PEM formatted certificate. The
2157 <parameter>passphrase</parameter> parameter must contain the
2158 password required to use the certificate.</para>
2160 <para>This requires the "curl" extension to be compiled into your
2161 installation of PHP. For more details see the man page for the
2162 <function>curl_setopt</function> function.</para>
2164 <para>Note: to retrieve information about the client certificate on
2165 the server side, you will need to look into the environment
2166 variables which are set up by the webserver. Different webservers
2167 will typically set up different variables.</para>
2171 <title>setCookie</title>
2175 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCookie</function></funcdef>
2177 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$name</parameter></paramdef>
2179 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$value</parameter></paramdef>
2181 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$path</parameter></paramdef>
2183 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$domain</parameter></paramdef>
2185 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$port</parameter></paramdef>
2189 <para>This method sets a cookie that will be sent to the xmlrpc
2190 server along with every further request (useful e.g. for keeping
2191 session info outside of the xml-rpc payload).</para>
2193 <para><parameter>$value</parameter> is optional, and defaults to
2196 <para><parameter>$path, $domain and $port</parameter> are optional,
2197 and will be omitted from the cookie header if unspecified. Note that
2198 setting any of these values will turn the cookie into a 'version 1'
2199 cookie, that might not be fully supported by the server (see RFC2965
2200 for more details).</para>
2204 <title>setCredentials</title>
2208 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCredentials</function></funcdef>
2210 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$username</parameter></paramdef>
2212 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$password</parameter></paramdef>
2214 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$authtype</parameter></paramdef>
2218 <para>This method sets the username and password for authorizing the
2219 client to a server. With the default (HTTP) transport, this
2220 information is used for HTTP Basic authorization. Note that username
2221 and password can also be set using the class constructor. With HTTP
2222 1.1 and HTTPS transport, NTLM and Digest authentication protocols
2223 are also supported. To enable them use the constants
2224 <constant>CURLAUTH_DIGEST</constant> and
2225 <constant>CURLAUTH_NTLM</constant> as values for the authtype
2230 <title>setCurlOptions</title>
2232 <para><funcsynopsis>
2234 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCurlOptions</function></funcdef>
2236 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
2238 </funcsynopsis>This method allows to directly set any desired
2239 option to manipulate the usage of the cURL client (when in cURL
2240 mode). It can be used eg. to explicitly bind to an outgoing ip
2241 address when the server is multihomed</para>
2245 <title>setDebug</title>
2249 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setDebug</function></funcdef>
2251 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$debugLvl</parameter></paramdef>
2255 <para><parameter>debugLvl</parameter> is either <literal>0,
2256 1</literal> or 2 depending on whether you require the client to
2257 print debugging information to the browser. The default is not to
2258 output this information (0).</para>
2260 <para>The debugging information at level 1includes the raw data
2261 returned from the XML-RPC server it was querying (including bot HTTP
2262 headers and the full XML payload), and the PHP value the client
2263 attempts to create to represent the value returned by the server. At
2264 level2, the complete payload of the xmlrpc request is also printed,
2265 before being sent t the server.</para>
2267 <para>This option can be very useful when debugging servers as it
2268 allows you to see exactly what the client sends and the server
2273 <title>setKey</title>
2277 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setKey</function></funcdef>
2279 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$key</parameter></paramdef>
2281 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$keypass</parameter></paramdef>
2285 <para>This method sets the optional certificate key and passphrase
2286 used in SSL-enabled communication with a remote server (when the
2287 <parameter>transport</parameter> is set to 'https' in the client's
2288 construction or in the send method).</para>
2290 <para>This requires the "curl" extension to be compiled into your
2291 installation of PHP. For more details see the man page for the
2292 <function>curl_setopt</function> function.</para>
2296 <title>setProxy</title>
2300 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setProxy</function></funcdef>
2302 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$proxyhost</parameter></paramdef>
2304 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$proxyport</parameter></paramdef>
2306 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$proxyusername</parameter></paramdef>
2308 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$proxypassword</parameter></paramdef>
2310 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$authtype</parameter></paramdef>
2314 <para>This method enables calling servers via an HTTP proxy. The
2315 <parameter>proxyusername</parameter>,<parameter>
2316 proxypassword</parameter> and <parameter>authtype</parameter>
2317 parameters are optional. <parameter>Authtype</parameter> defaults to
2318 <constant>CURLAUTH_BASIC</constant> (Basic authentication protocol);
2319 the only other valid value is the constant
2320 <constant>CURLAUTH_NTLM</constant>, and has effect only when the
2321 client uses the HTTP 1.1 protocol.</para>
2323 <para>NB: CURL versions before 7.11.10 cannot use a proxy to
2324 communicate with https servers.</para>
2328 <title>setRequestCompression</title>
2332 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setRequestCompression</function></funcdef>
2334 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$compressionmethod</parameter></paramdef>
2338 <para>This method defines whether the xml payload forming the
2339 request body will be sent to the server in compressed format, as per
2340 the HTTP specification. This is particularly useful for large
2341 request parameters and over slow network connections. Allowed values
2342 for <parameter>compressionmethod</parameter> are: 'gzip', 'deflate',
2343 'any' or null (with any meaning either gzip or deflate). Note that
2344 there is no automatic fallback mechanism in place for errors due to
2345 servers not supporting receiving compressed request bodies, so make
2346 sure that the particular server you are querying does accept
2347 compressed requests before turning it on.</para>
2349 <para>This requires the "zlib" extension to be enabled in your php
2354 <title>setSSLVerifyHost</title>
2358 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setSSLVerifyHost</function></funcdef>
2360 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$i</parameter></paramdef>
2364 <para>This method defines whether connections made to XML-RPC
2365 backends via HTTPS should verify the remote host's SSL certificate's
2366 common name (CN). By default, only the existence of a CN is checked.
2367 <parameter><parameter>$i</parameter></parameter> should be an
2368 integer value; 0 to not check the CN at all, 1 to merely check for
2369 its existence, and 2 to check that the CN on the certificate matches
2370 the hostname that is being connected to.</para>
2374 <title>setSSLVerifyPeer</title>
2378 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setSSLVerifyPeer</function></funcdef>
2380 <paramdef><type>bool</type><parameter>$i</parameter></paramdef>
2384 <para>This method defines whether connections made to XML-RPC
2385 backends via HTTPS should verify the remote host's SSL certificate,
2386 and cause the connection to fail if the cert verification fails.
2387 <parameter><parameter>$i</parameter></parameter> should be a boolean
2388 value. Default value: <constant>TRUE</constant>. To specify custom
2389 SSL certificates to validate the server with, use the
2390 <methodname>setCaCertificate</methodname> method.</para>
2394 <title>setSSLVersion</title>
2398 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setSSLVersion</function></funcdef>
2400 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$i</parameter></paramdef>
2404 <para>This method sets the SSL version to be used when making https calls.
2405 See the PHP manual for CURLOPT_SSLVERSION for a description of the allowed values.</para>
2409 <title>setUserAgent</title>
2411 <para><funcsynopsis>
2413 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>Useragent</function></funcdef>
2415 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$useragent</parameter></paramdef>
2417 </funcsynopsis>This method sets a custom user-agent that will be
2418 used by the client in the http headers sent with the request. The
2419 default value is built using the library name and version
2425 <title>Variables</title>
2427 <para>NB: direct manipulation of these variables is only recommended
2428 for advanced users.</para>
2431 <title>no_multicall</title>
2433 <para>This member variable determines whether the multicall() method
2434 will try to take advantage of the system.multicall xmlrpc method to
2435 dispatch to the server an array of requests in a single http
2436 roundtrip or simply execute many consecutive http calls. Defaults to
2437 FALSE, but it will be enabled automatically on the first failure of
2438 execution of system.multicall.</para>
2442 <title>request_charset_encoding</title>
2444 <para>This is the charset encoding that will be used for serializing
2445 request sent by the client.</para>
2447 <para>If defaults to NULL, which means using US-ASCII and encoding
2448 all characters outside of the ASCII range using their xml character
2449 entity representation (this has the benefit that line end characters
2450 will not be mangled in the transfer, a CR-LF will be preserved as
2451 well as a singe LF).</para>
2453 <para>Valid values are 'US-ASCII', 'UTF-8' and 'ISO-8859-1'</para>
2456 <sect3 id="return-type" xreflabel="return_type">
2457 <title>return_type</title>
2459 <para>This member variable determines whether the value returned
2460 inside an xmlrpcresp object as results of calls to the send() and
2461 multicall() methods will be an xmlrpcval object, a plain php value
2462 or a raw xml string. Allowed values are 'xmlrpcvals' (the default),
2463 'phpvals' and 'xml'. To allow the user to differentiate between a
2464 correct and a faulty response, fault responses will be returned as
2465 xmlrpcresp objects in any case. Note that the 'phpvals' setting will
2466 yield faster execution times, but some of the information from the
2467 original response will be lost. It will be e.g. impossible to tell
2468 whether a particular php string value was sent by the server as an
2469 xmlrpc string or base64 value.</para>
2471 <para>Example usage:</para>
2473 <programlisting language="php">
2474 $client = new xmlrpc_client("phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/server.php");
2475 $client->return_type = 'phpvals';
2476 $message = new xmlrpcmsg("examples.getStateName", array(new xmlrpcval(23, "int")));
2477 $resp = $client->send($message);
2478 if ($resp->faultCode()) echo 'KO. Error: '.$resp->faultString(); else echo 'OK: got '.$resp->value();
2481 <para>For more details about usage of the 'xml' value, see Appendix
2487 <sect1 id="xmlrpcresp" xreflabel="xmlrpcresp">
2488 <title>xmlrpcresp</title>
2490 <para>This class is used to contain responses to XML-RPC requests. A
2491 server method handler will construct an
2492 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> and pass it as a return value. This
2493 same value will be returned by the result of an invocation of the
2494 <function>send</function> method of the
2495 <classname>xmlrpc_client</classname> class.</para>
2498 <title>Creation</title>
2502 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type>new
2503 <function>xmlrpcresp</function></funcdef>
2505 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><parameter>$xmlrpcval</parameter></paramdef>
2509 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type>new
2510 <function>xmlrpcresp</function></funcdef>
2512 <paramdef><parameter>0</parameter></paramdef>
2514 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$errcode</parameter></paramdef>
2516 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$err_string</parameter></paramdef>
2520 <para>The first syntax is used when execution has happened without
2521 difficulty: <parameter>$xmlrpcval</parameter> is an
2522 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> value with the result of the method
2523 execution contained in it. Alternatively it can be a string containing
2524 the xml serialization of the single xml-rpc value result of method
2527 <para>The second type of constructor is used in case of failure.
2528 <parameter>errcode</parameter> and <parameter>err_string</parameter>
2529 are used to provide indication of what has gone wrong. See <xref
2530 linkend="xmlrpc-server" /> for more information on passing error
2535 <title>Methods</title>
2538 <title>faultCode</title>
2542 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>faultCode</function></funcdef>
2548 <para>Returns the integer fault code return from the XML-RPC
2549 response. A zero value indicates success, any other value indicates
2550 a failure response.</para>
2554 <title>faultString</title>
2558 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>faultString</function></funcdef>
2564 <para>Returns the human readable explanation of the fault indicated
2565 by <function>$resp->faultCode</function>().</para>
2569 <title>value</title>
2573 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>value</function></funcdef>
2579 <para>Returns an <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> object containing
2580 the return value sent by the server. If the response's
2581 <function>faultCode</function> is non-zero then the value returned
2582 by this method should not be used (it may not even be an
2585 <para>Note: if the xmlrpcresp instance in question has been created
2586 by an <classname>xmlrpc_client</classname> object whose
2587 <varname>return_type</varname> was set to 'phpvals', then a plain
2588 php value will be returned instead of an
2589 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> object. If the
2590 <varname>return_type</varname> was set to 'xml', an xml string will
2591 be returned (see the return_type member var above for more
2596 <title>serialize</title>
2600 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>serialize</function></funcdef>
2606 <para>Returns an XML string representation of the response (xml
2607 prologue not included).</para>
2612 <sect1 id="xmlrpc-server" xreflabel="xmlrpc_server">
2613 <title>xmlrpc_server</title>
2615 <para>The implementation of this class has been kept as simple to use as
2616 possible. The constructor for the server basically does all the work.
2617 Here's a minimal example:</para>
2619 <programlisting language="php">
2620 function foo ($xmlrpcmsg) {
2622 return new xmlrpcresp($some_xmlrpc_val);
2626 function foobar($xmlrpcmsg) {
2628 return new xmlrpcresp($some_xmlrpc_val);
2632 $s = new xmlrpc_server(
2634 "examples.myFunc1" => array("function" => "foo"),
2635 "examples.myFunc2" => array("function" => "bar::foobar"),
2639 <para>This performs everything you need to do with a server. The single
2640 constructor argument is an associative array from xmlrpc method names to
2641 php function names. The incoming request is parsed and dispatched to the
2642 relevant php function, which is responsible for returning a
2643 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> object, that will be serialized back
2644 to the caller.</para>
2647 <title>Method handler functions</title>
2649 <para>Both php functions and class methods can be registered as xmlrpc
2650 method handlers.</para>
2652 <para>The synopsis of a method handler function is:</para>
2654 <para><synopsis>xmlrpcresp $resp = function (xmlrpcmsg $msg)</synopsis></para>
2656 <para>No text should be echoed 'to screen' by the handler function, or
2657 it will break the xml response sent back to the client. This applies
2658 also to error and warning messages that PHP prints to screen unless
2659 the appropriate parameters have been set in the php.in file. Another
2660 way to prevent echoing of errors inside the response and facilitate
2661 debugging is to use the server SetDebug method with debug level 3 (see
2662 ...). Exceptions thrown duting execution of handler functions are
2663 caught by default and a XML-RPC error reponse is generated instead.
2664 This behaviour can be finetuned by usage of the
2665 <varname>exception_handling</varname> member variable (see
2668 <para>Note that if you implement a method with a name prefixed by
2669 <code>system.</code> the handler function will be invoked by the
2670 server with two parameters, the first being the server itself and the
2671 second being the <classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname> object.</para>
2673 <para>The same php function can be registered as handler of multiple
2674 xmlrpc methods.</para>
2676 <para>Here is a more detailed example of what the handler function
2677 <function>foo</function> may do:</para>
2679 <programlisting language="php">
2680 function foo ($xmlrpcmsg) {
2681 global $xmlrpcerruser; // import user errcode base value
2683 $meth = $xmlrpcmsg->method(); // retrieve method name
2684 $par = $xmlrpcmsg->getParam(0); // retrieve value of first parameter - assumes at least one param received
2685 $val = $par->scalarval(); // decode value of first parameter - assumes it is a scalar value
2690 // this is an error condition
2691 return new xmlrpcresp(0, $xmlrpcerruser+1, // user error 1
2692 "There's a problem, Captain");
2694 // this is a successful value being returned
2695 return new xmlrpcresp(new xmlrpcval("All's fine!", "string"));
2700 <para>See <filename>server.php</filename> in this distribution for
2701 more examples of how to do this.</para>
2703 <para>Since release 2.0RC3 there is a new, even simpler way of
2704 registering php functions with the server. See section 5.7
2709 <title>The dispatch map</title>
2711 <para>The first argument to the <function>xmlrpc_server</function>
2712 constructor is an array, called the <emphasis>dispatch map</emphasis>.
2713 In this array is the information the server needs to service the
2714 XML-RPC methods you define.</para>
2716 <para>The dispatch map takes the form of an associative array of
2717 associative arrays: the outer array has one entry for each method, the
2718 key being the method name. The corresponding value is another
2719 associative array, which can have the following members:</para>
2723 <para><function><literal>function</literal></function> - this
2724 entry is mandatory. It must be either a name of a function in the
2725 global scope which services the XML-RPC method, or an array
2726 containing an instance of an object and a static method name (for
2727 static class methods the 'class::method' syntax is also
2732 <para><function><literal>signature</literal></function> - this
2733 entry is an array containing the possible signatures (see <xref
2734 linkend="signatures" />) for the method. If this entry is present
2735 then the server will check that the correct number and type of
2736 parameters have been sent for this method before dispatching
2741 <para><function><literal>docstring</literal></function> - this
2742 entry is a string containing documentation for the method. The
2743 documentation may contain HTML markup.</para>
2747 <para><literal>signature_docs</literal> - this entry can be used
2748 to provide documentation for the single parameters. It must match
2749 in structure the 'signature' member. By default, only the
2750 <classname>documenting_xmlrpc_server</classname> class in the
2751 extras package will take advantage of this, since the
2752 "system.methodHelp" protocol does not support documenting method
2753 parameters individually.</para>
2757 <para><literal>parameters_type</literal> - this entry can be used
2758 when the server is working in 'xmlrpcvals' mode (see ...) to
2759 define one or more entries in the dispatch map as being functions
2760 that follow the 'phpvals' calling convention. The only useful
2761 value is currently the string <literal>phpvals</literal>.</para>
2765 <para>Look at the <filename>server.php</filename> example in the
2766 distribution to see what a dispatch map looks like.</para>
2769 <sect2 id="signatures" xreflabel="Signatures">
2770 <title>Method signatures</title>
2772 <para>A signature is a description of a method's return type and its
2773 parameter types. A method may have more than one signature.</para>
2775 <para>Within a server's dispatch map, each method has an array of
2776 possible signatures. Each signature is an array of types. The first
2777 entry is the return type. For instance, the method <programlisting
2778 language="php">string examples.getStateName(int)
2779 </programlisting> has the signature <programlisting language="php">array($xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcInt)
2780 </programlisting> and, assuming that it is the only possible signature for the
2781 method, it might be used like this in server creation: <programlisting
2783 $findstate_sig = array(array($xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcInt));
2785 $findstate_doc = 'When passed an integer between 1 and 51 returns the
2786 name of a US state, where the integer is the index of that state name
2787 in an alphabetic order.';
2789 $s = new xmlrpc_server( array(
2790 "examples.getStateName" => array(
2791 "function" => "findstate",
2792 "signature" => $findstate_sig,
2793 "docstring" => $findstate_doc
2795 </programlisting></para>
2797 <para>Note that method signatures do not allow to check nested
2798 parameters, e.g. the number, names and types of the members of a
2799 struct param cannot be validated.</para>
2801 <para>If a method that you want to expose has a definite number of
2802 parameters, but each of those parameters could reasonably be of
2803 multiple types, the array of acceptable signatures will easily grow
2804 into a combinatorial explosion. To avoid such a situation, the lib
2805 defines the global var <varname>$xmlrpcValue</varname>, which can be
2806 used in method signatures as a placeholder for 'any xmlrpc
2809 <para><programlisting language="php">
2810 $echoback_sig = array(array($xmlrpcValue, $xmlrpcValue));
2812 $findstate_doc = 'Echoes back to the client the received value, regardless of its type';
2814 $s = new xmlrpc_server( array(
2815 "echoBack" => array(
2816 "function" => "echoback",
2817 "signature" => $echoback_sig, // this sig guarantees that the method handler will be called with one and only one parameter
2818 "docstring" => $echoback_doc
2820 </programlisting></para>
2822 <para>Methods <methodname>system.listMethods</methodname>,
2823 <methodname>system.methodHelp</methodname>,
2824 <methodname>system.methodSignature</methodname> and
2825 <methodname>system.multicall</methodname> are already defined by the
2826 server, and should not be reimplemented (see Reserved Methods
2831 <title>Delaying the server response</title>
2833 <para>You may want to construct the server, but for some reason not
2834 fulfill the request immediately (security verification, for instance).
2835 If you omit to pass to the constructor the dispatch map or pass it a
2836 second argument of <literal>0</literal> this will have the desired
2837 effect. You can then use the <function>service()</function> method of
2838 the server class to service the request. For example:</para>
2840 <programlisting language="php">
2841 $s = new xmlrpc_server($myDispMap, 0); // second parameter = 0 prevents automatic servicing of request
2843 // ... some code that does other stuff here
2848 <para>Note that the <methodname>service</methodname> method will print
2849 the complete result payload to screen and send appropriate HTTP
2850 headers back to the client, but also return the response object. This
2851 permits further manipulation of the response, possibly in combination
2852 with output buffering.</para>
2854 <para>To prevent the server from sending HTTP headers back to the
2855 client, you can pass a second parameter with a value of
2856 <literal>TRUE</literal> to the <methodname>service</methodname>
2857 method. In this case, the response payload will be returned instead of
2858 the response object.</para>
2860 <para>Xmlrpc requests retrieved by other means than HTTP POST bodies
2861 can also be processed. For example:</para>
2863 <programlisting language="php">
2864 $s = new xmlrpc_server(); // not passing a dispatch map prevents automatic servicing of request
2866 // ... some code that does other stuff here, including setting dispatch map into server object
2868 $resp = $s->service($xmlrpc_request_body, true); // parse a variable instead of POST body, retrieve response payload
2870 // ... some code that does other stuff with xml response $resp here
2875 <title>Modifying the server behaviour</title>
2877 <para>A couple of methods / class variables are available to modify
2878 the behaviour of the server. The only way to take advantage of their
2879 existence is by usage of a delayed server response (see above)</para>
2882 <title>setDebug()</title>
2884 <para>This function controls weather the server is going to echo
2885 debugging messages back to the client as comments in response body.
2886 Valid values: 0,1,2,3, with 1 being the default. At level 0, no
2887 debug info is returned to the client. At level 2, the complete
2888 client request is added to the response, as part of the xml
2889 comments. At level 3, a new PHP error handler is set when executing
2890 user functions exposed as server methods, and all non-fatal errors
2891 are trapped and added as comments into the response.</para>
2895 <title>allow_system_funcs</title>
2897 <para>Default_value: TRUE. When set to FALSE, disables support for
2898 <methodname>System.xxx</methodname> functions in the server. It
2899 might be useful e.g. if you do not wish the server to respond to
2900 requests to <methodname>System.ListMethods</methodname>.</para>
2904 <title>compress_response</title>
2906 <para>When set to TRUE, enables the server to take advantage of HTTP
2907 compression, otherwise disables it. Responses will be transparently
2908 compressed, but only when an xmlrpc-client declares its support for
2909 compression in the HTTP headers of the request.</para>
2911 <para>Note that the ZLIB php extension must be installed for this to
2912 work. If it is, <varname>compress_response</varname> will default to
2917 <title>exception_handling</title>
2919 <para>This variable controls the behaviour of the server when an
2920 exception is thrown by a method handler php function. Valid values:
2921 0,1,2, with 0 being the default. At level 0, the server catches the
2922 exception and return an 'internal error' xmlrpc response; at 1 it
2923 catches the exceptions and return an xmlrpc response with the error
2924 code and error message corresponding to the exception that was
2925 thron; at 2 = the exception is floated to the upper layers in the
2930 <title>response_charset_encoding</title>
2932 <para>Charset encoding to be used for response (only affects string
2935 <para>If it can, the server will convert the generated response from
2936 internal_encoding to the intended one.</para>
2938 <para>Valid values are: a supported xml encoding (only UTF-8 and
2939 ISO-8859-1 at present, unless mbstring is enabled), null (leave
2940 charset unspecified in response and convert output stream to
2941 US_ASCII), 'default' (use xmlrpc library default as specified in
2942 xmlrpc.inc, convert output stream if needed), or 'auto' (use
2943 client-specified charset encoding or same as request if request
2944 headers do not specify it (unless request is US-ASCII: then use
2945 library default anyway).</para>
2950 <title>Fault reporting</title>
2952 <para>Fault codes for your servers should start at the value indicated
2953 by the global <literal>$xmlrpcerruser</literal> + 1.</para>
2955 <para>Standard errors returned by the server include:</para>
2959 <term><literal>1</literal> <phrase>Unknown method</phrase></term>
2962 <para>Returned if the server was asked to dispatch a method it
2963 didn't know about</para>
2968 <term><literal>2</literal> <phrase>Invalid return
2969 payload</phrase></term>
2972 <para>This error is actually generated by the client, not
2973 server, code, but signifies that a server returned something it
2974 couldn't understand. A more detailed error report is sometimes
2975 added onto the end of the phrase above.</para>
2980 <term><literal>3</literal> <phrase>Incorrect
2981 parameters</phrase></term>
2984 <para>This error is generated when the server has signature(s)
2985 defined for a method, and the parameters passed by the client do
2986 not match any of signatures.</para>
2991 <term><literal>4</literal> <phrase>Can't introspect: method
2992 unknown</phrase></term>
2995 <para>This error is generated by the builtin
2996 <function>system.*</function> methods when any kind of
2997 introspection is attempted on a method undefined by the
3003 <term><literal>5</literal> <phrase>Didn't receive 200 OK from
3004 remote server</phrase></term>
3007 <para>This error is generated by the client when a remote server
3008 doesn't return HTTP/1.1 200 OK in response to a request. A more
3009 detailed error report is added onto the end of the phrase
3015 <term><literal>6</literal> <phrase>No data received from
3016 server</phrase></term>
3019 <para>This error is generated by the client when a remote server
3020 returns HTTP/1.1 200 OK in response to a request, but no
3021 response body follows the HTTP headers.</para>
3026 <term><literal>7</literal> <phrase>No SSL support compiled
3030 <para>This error is generated by the client when trying to send
3031 a request with HTTPS and the CURL extension is not available to
3037 <term><literal>8</literal> <phrase>CURL error</phrase></term>
3040 <para>This error is generated by the client when trying to send
3041 a request with HTTPS and the HTTPS communication fails.</para>
3046 <term><literal>9-14</literal> <phrase>multicall
3047 errors</phrase></term>
3050 <para>These errors are generated by the server when something
3051 fails inside a system.multicall request.</para>
3056 <term><literal>100-</literal> <phrase>XML parse
3057 errors</phrase></term>
3060 <para>Returns 100 plus the XML parser error code for the fault
3061 that occurred. The <function>faultString</function> returned
3062 explains where the parse error was in the incoming XML
3070 <title>'New style' servers</title>
3072 <para>In the same spirit of simplification that inspired the
3073 <varname>xmlrpc_client::return_type</varname> class variable, a new
3074 class variable has been added to the server class:
3075 <varname>functions_parameters_type</varname>. When set to 'phpvals',
3076 the functions registered in the server dispatch map will be called
3077 with plain php values as parameters, instead of a single xmlrpcmsg
3078 instance parameter. The return value of those functions is expected to
3079 be a plain php value, too. An example is worth a thousand
3080 words:<programlisting language="php">
3081 function foo($usr_id, $out_lang='en') {
3082 global $xmlrpcerruser;
3086 if ($someErrorCondition)
3087 return new xmlrpcresp(0, $xmlrpcerruser+1, 'DOH!');
3092 'picture' => new xmlrpcval(file_get_contents($picOfTheGuy), 'base64')
3096 $s = new xmlrpc_server(
3098 "examples.myFunc" => array(
3099 "function" => "bar::foobar",
3100 "signature" => array(
3101 array($xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcInt),
3102 array($xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcInt, $xmlrpcString)
3106 $s->functions_parameters_type = 'phpvals';
3108 </programlisting>There are a few things to keep in mind when using this
3109 simplified syntax:</para>
3111 <para>to return an xmlrpc error, the method handler function must
3112 return an instance of <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname>. The only
3113 other way for the server to know when an error response should be
3114 served to the client is to throw an exception and set the server's
3115 <varname>exception_handling</varname> memeber var to 1;</para>
3117 <para>to return a base64 value, the method handler function must
3118 encode it on its own, creating an instance of an xmlrpcval
3121 <para>the method handler function cannot determine the name of the
3122 xmlrpc method it is serving, unlike standard handler functions that
3123 can retrieve it from the message object;</para>
3125 <para>when receiving nested parameters, the method handler function
3126 has no way to distinguish a php string that was sent as base64 value
3127 from one that was sent as a string value;</para>
3129 <para>this has a direct consequence on the support of
3130 system.multicall: a method whose signature contains datetime or base64
3131 values will not be available to multicall calls;</para>
3133 <para>last but not least, the direct parsing of xml to php values is
3134 much faster than using xmlrpcvals, and allows the library to handle
3135 much bigger messages without allocating all available server memory or
3136 smashing PHP recursive call stack.</para>
3141 <chapter id="globalvars">
3142 <title>Global variables</title>
3144 <para>Many global variables are defined in the xmlrpc.inc file. Some of
3145 those are meant to be used as constants (and modifying their value might
3146 cause unpredictable behaviour), while some others can be modified in your
3147 php scripts to alter the behaviour of the xml-rpc client and
3151 <title>"Constant" variables</title>
3154 <title>$xmlrpcerruser</title>
3156 <para><fieldsynopsis>
3157 <varname>$xmlrpcerruser</varname>
3159 <initializer>800</initializer>
3160 </fieldsynopsis>The minimum value for errors reported by user
3161 implemented XML-RPC servers. Error numbers lower than that are
3162 reserved for library usage.</para>
3166 <title>$xmlrpcI4, $xmlrpcInt, $xmlrpcBoolean, $xmlrpcDouble,
3167 $xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcDateTime, $xmlrpcBase64, $xmlrpcArray,
3168 $xmlrpcStruct, $xmlrpcValue, $xmlrpcNull</title>
3170 <para>For convenience the strings representing the XML-RPC types have
3171 been encoded as global variables:<programlisting language="php">
3174 $xmlrpcBoolean="boolean";
3175 $xmlrpcDouble="double";
3176 $xmlrpcString="string";
3177 $xmlrpcDateTime="dateTime.iso8601";
3178 $xmlrpcBase64="base64";
3179 $xmlrpcArray="array";
3180 $xmlrpcStruct="struct";
3181 $xmlrpcValue="undefined";
3183 </programlisting></para>
3187 <title>$xmlrpcTypes, $xmlrpc_valid_parents, $xmlrpcerr, $xmlrpcstr,
3188 $xmlrpcerrxml, $xmlrpc_backslash, $_xh, $xml_iso88591_Entities,
3189 $xmlEntities, $xmlrpcs_capabilities</title>
3191 <para>Reserved for internal usage.</para>
3196 <title>Variables whose value can be modified</title>
3198 <sect2 id="xmlrpc-defencoding" xreflabel="xmlrpc_defencoding">
3199 <title xreflabel="">xmlrpc_defencoding</title>
3202 <varname>$xmlrpc_defencoding</varname>
3204 <initializer>"UTF8"</initializer>
3207 <para>This variable defines the character set encoding that will be
3208 used by the xml-rpc client and server to decode the received messages,
3209 when a specific charset declaration is not found (in the messages sent
3210 non-ascii chars are always encoded using character references, so that
3211 the produced xml is valid regardless of the charset encoding
3214 <para>Allowed values: <literal>"UTF8"</literal>,
3215 <literal>"ISO-8859-1"</literal>, <literal>"ASCII".</literal></para>
3217 <para>Note that the appropriate RFC actually mandates that XML
3218 received over HTTP without indication of charset encoding be treated
3219 as US-ASCII, but many servers and clients 'in the wild' violate the
3220 standard, and assume the default encoding is UTF-8.</para>
3224 <title>xmlrpc_internalencoding</title>
3226 <para><fieldsynopsis>
3227 <varname>$xmlrpc_internalencoding</varname>
3229 <initializer>"ISO-8859-1"</initializer>
3230 </fieldsynopsis>This variable defines the character set encoding
3231 that the library uses to transparently encode into valid XML the
3232 xml-rpc values created by the user and to re-encode the received
3233 xml-rpc values when it passes them to the PHP application. It only
3234 affects xml-rpc values of string type. It is a separate value from
3235 xmlrpc_defencoding, allowing e.g. to send/receive xml messages encoded
3236 on-the-wire in US-ASCII and process them as UTF-8. It defaults to the
3237 character set used internally by PHP (unless you are running an
3238 MBString-enabled installation), so you should change it only in
3239 special situations, if e.g. the string values exchanged in the xml-rpc
3240 messages are directly inserted into / fetched from a database
3241 configured to return UTF8 encoded strings to PHP. Example
3244 <para><programlisting language="php">
3247 include('xmlrpc.inc');
3248 $xmlrpc_internalencoding = 'UTF-8'; // this has to be set after the inclusion above
3249 $v = new xmlrpcval('κόÏ
\83με'); // This xmlrpc value will be correctly serialized as the greek word 'kosme'
3250 </programlisting></para>
3254 <title>xmlrpcName</title>
3256 <para><fieldsynopsis>
3257 <varname>$xmlrpcName</varname>
3259 <initializer>"XML-RPC for PHP"</initializer>
3260 </fieldsynopsis>The string representation of the name of the XML-RPC
3261 for PHP library. It is used by the client for building the User-Agent
3262 HTTP header that is sent with every request to the server. You can
3263 change its value if you need to customize the User-Agent
3268 <title>xmlrpcVersion</title>
3270 <para><fieldsynopsis>
3271 <varname>$xmlrpcVersion</varname>
3273 <initializer>"2.2"</initializer>
3274 </fieldsynopsis>The string representation of the version number of
3275 the XML-RPC for PHP library in use. It is used by the client for
3276 building the User-Agent HTTP header that is sent with every request to
3277 the server. You can change its value if you need to customize the
3278 User-Agent string.</para>
3282 <title>xmlrpc_null_extension</title>
3284 <para>When set to <constant>TRUE</constant>, the lib will enable
3285 support for the <NIL/> (and <EX:NIL/>) xmlrpc value, as
3286 per the extension to the standard proposed here. This means that
3287 <NIL/> and <EX:NIL/> tags received will be parsed as valid
3288 xmlrpc, and the corresponding xmlrpcvals will return "null" for
3289 <methodname>scalarTyp()</methodname>.</para>
3293 <title>xmlrpc_null_apache_encoding</title>
3295 <para>When set to <literal>TRUE</literal>, php NULL values encoded
3296 into <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects get serialized using the
3297 <literal><EX:NIL/></literal> tag instead of
3298 <literal><NIL/></literal>. Please note that both forms are
3299 always accepted as input regardless of the value of this
3305 <chapter id="helpers">
3306 <title>Helper functions</title>
3308 <para>XML-RPC for PHP contains some helper functions which you can use to
3309 make processing of XML-RPC requests easier.</para>
3312 <title>Date functions</title>
3314 <para>The XML-RPC specification has this to say on dates:</para>
3317 <para id="wrap_xmlrpc_method">Don't assume a timezone. It should be
3318 specified by the server in its documentation what assumptions it makes
3319 about timezones.</para>
3322 <para>Unfortunately, this means that date processing isn't
3323 straightforward. Although XML-RPC uses ISO 8601 format dates, it doesn't
3324 use the timezone specifier.</para>
3326 <para>We strongly recommend that in every case where you pass dates in
3327 XML-RPC calls, you use UTC (GMT) as your timezone. Most computer
3328 languages include routines for handling GMT times natively, and you
3329 won't have to translate between timezones.</para>
3331 <para>For more information about dates, see <ulink
3332 url="http://www.uic.edu/year2000/datefmt.html">ISO 8601: The Right
3333 Format for Dates</ulink>, which has a handy link to a PDF of the ISO
3334 8601 specification. Note that XML-RPC uses exactly one of the available
3335 representations: CCYYMMDDTHH:MM:SS.</para>
3337 <sect2 id="iso8601encode" xreflabel="iso8601_encode()">
3338 <title>iso8601_encode</title>
3342 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>iso8601_encode</function></funcdef>
3344 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$time_t</parameter></paramdef>
3347 choice="opt"><type>int</type><parameter>$utc</parameter><initializer>0</initializer></paramdef>
3351 <para>Returns an ISO 8601 formatted date generated from the UNIX
3352 timestamp <parameter>$time_t</parameter>, as returned by the PHP
3353 function <function>time()</function>.</para>
3355 <para>The argument <parameter>$utc</parameter> can be omitted, in
3356 which case it defaults to <literal>0</literal>. If it is set to
3357 <literal>1</literal>, then the function corrects the time passed in
3358 for UTC. Example: if you're in the GMT-6:00 timezone and set
3359 <parameter>$utc</parameter>, you will receive a date representation
3360 six hours ahead of your local time.</para>
3362 <para>The included demo program <filename>vardemo.php</filename>
3363 includes a demonstration of this function.</para>
3366 <sect2 id="iso8601decode" xreflabel="iso8601_decode()">
3367 <title>iso8601_decode</title>
3371 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>iso8601_decode</function></funcdef>
3373 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$isoString</parameter></paramdef>
3375 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$utc</parameter><initializer>0</initializer></paramdef>
3379 <para>Returns a UNIX timestamp from an ISO 8601 encoded time and date
3380 string passed in. If <parameter>$utc</parameter> is
3381 <literal>1</literal> then <parameter>$isoString</parameter> is assumed
3382 to be in the UTC timezone, and thus the result is also UTC: otherwise,
3383 the timezone is assumed to be your local timezone and you receive a
3384 local timestamp.</para>
3388 <sect1 id="arrayuse">
3389 <title>Easy use with nested PHP values</title>
3391 <para>Dan Libby was kind enough to contribute two helper functions that
3392 make it easier to translate to and from PHP values. This makes it easier
3393 to deal with complex structures. At the moment support is limited to
3394 <type>int</type>, <type>double</type>, <type>string</type>,
3395 <type>array</type>, <type>datetime</type> and <type>struct</type>
3396 datatypes; note also that all PHP arrays are encoded as structs, except
3397 arrays whose keys are integer numbers starting with 0 and incremented by
3400 <para>These functions reside in <filename>xmlrpc.inc</filename>.</para>
3402 <sect2 id="phpxmlrpcdecode">
3403 <title>php_xmlrpc_decode</title>
3407 <funcdef><type>mixed</type><function>php_xmlrpc_decode</function></funcdef>
3409 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><parameter>$xmlrpc_val</parameter></paramdef>
3411 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
3415 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>php_xmlrpc_decode</function></funcdef>
3417 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcmsg</type><parameter>$xmlrpcmsg_val</parameter></paramdef>
3419 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
3423 <para>Returns a native PHP value corresponding to the values found in
3424 the <type>xmlrpcval</type> <parameter>$xmlrpc_val</parameter>,
3425 translated into PHP types. Base-64 and datetime values are
3426 automatically decoded to strings.</para>
3428 <para>In the second form, returns an array containing the parameters
3430 <parameter><classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname>_val</parameter>, decoded
3431 to php types.</para>
3433 <para>The <parameter>options</parameter> parameter is optional. If
3434 specified, it must consist of an array of options to be enabled in the
3435 decoding process. At the moment the only valid option are
3436 <symbol>decode_php_objs</symbol> and
3437 <literal>dates_as_objects</literal>. When the first is set, php
3438 objects that have been converted to xml-rpc structs using the
3439 <function>php_xmlrpc_encode</function> function and a corresponding
3440 encoding option will be converted back into object values instead of
3441 arrays (provided that the class definition is available at
3442 reconstruction time). When the second is set, XML-RPC datetime values
3443 will be converted into native <classname>dateTime</classname> objects
3444 instead of strings.</para>
3446 <para><emphasis><emphasis>WARNING</emphasis>:</emphasis> please take
3447 extreme care before enabling the <symbol>decode_php_objs</symbol>
3448 option: when php objects are rebuilt from the received xml, their
3449 constructor function will be silently invoked. This means that you are
3450 allowing the remote end to trigger execution of uncontrolled PHP code
3451 on your server, opening the door to code injection exploits. Only
3452 enable this option when you have complete trust of the remote
3453 server/client.</para>
3455 <para>Example:<programlisting language="php">
3456 // wrapper to expose an existing php function as xmlrpc method handler
3457 function foo_wrapper($m)
3459 $params = php_xmlrpc_decode($m);
3460 $retval = call_user_func_array('foo', $params);
3461 return new xmlrpcresp(new xmlrpcval($retval)); // foo return value will be serialized as string
3464 $s = new xmlrpc_server(array(
3465 "examples.myFunc1" => array(
3466 "function" => "foo_wrapper",
3467 "signatures" => ...
3469 </programlisting></para>
3472 <sect2 id="phpxmlrpcencode">
3473 <title>php_xmlrpc_encode</title>
3477 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>php_xmlrpc_encode</function></funcdef>
3479 <paramdef><type>mixed</type><parameter>$phpval</parameter></paramdef>
3481 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
3485 <para>Returns an <type>xmlrpcval</type> object populated with the PHP
3486 values in <parameter>$phpval</parameter>. Works recursively on arrays
3487 and objects, encoding numerically indexed php arrays into array-type
3488 xmlrpcval objects and non numerically indexed php arrays into
3489 struct-type xmlrpcval objects. Php objects are encoded into
3490 struct-type xmlrpcvals, excepted for php values that are already
3491 instances of the xmlrpcval class or descendants thereof, which will
3492 not be further encoded. Note that there's no support for encoding php
3493 values into base-64 values. Encoding of date-times is optionally
3494 carried on on php strings with the correct format.</para>
3496 <para>The <parameter>options</parameter> parameter is optional. If
3497 specified, it must consist of an array of options to be enabled in the
3498 encoding process. At the moment the only valid options are
3499 <symbol>encode_php_objs</symbol>, <literal>null_extension</literal>
3500 and <symbol>auto_dates</symbol>.</para>
3502 <para>The first will enable the creation of 'particular' xmlrpcval
3503 objects out of php objects, that add a "php_class" xml attribute to
3504 their serialized representation. This attribute allows the function
3505 php_xmlrpc_decode to rebuild the native php objects (provided that the
3506 same class definition exists on both sides of the communication). The
3507 second allows to encode php <literal>NULL</literal> values to the
3508 <literal><NIL/></literal> (or
3509 <literal><EX:NIL/></literal>, see ...) tag. The last encodes any
3510 string that matches the ISO8601 format into an XML-RPC
3513 <para>Example:<programlisting language="php">
3514 // the easy way to build a complex xml-rpc struct, showing nested base64 value and datetime values
3515 $val = php_xmlrpc_encode(array(
3516 'first struct_element: an int' => 666,
3517 'second: an array' => array ('apple', 'orange', 'banana'),
3518 'third: a base64 element' => new xmlrpcval('hello world', 'base64'),
3519 'fourth: a datetime' => '20060107T01:53:00'
3520 ), array('auto_dates'));
3521 </programlisting></para>
3525 <title>php_xmlrpc_decode_xml</title>
3529 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval | xmlrpcresp |
3530 xmlrpcmsg</type><function>php_xmlrpc_decode_xml</function></funcdef>
3532 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$xml</parameter></paramdef>
3534 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
3538 <para>Decodes the xml representation of either an xmlrpc request,
3539 response or single value, returning the corresponding php-xmlrpc
3540 object, or <literal>FALSE</literal> in case of an error.</para>
3542 <para>The <parameter>options</parameter> parameter is optional. If
3543 specified, it must consist of an array of options to be enabled in the
3544 decoding process. At the moment, no option is supported.</para>
3546 <para>Example:<programlisting language="php">
3547 $text = '<value><array><data><value>Hello world</value></data></array></value>';
3548 $val = php_xmlrpc_decode_xml($text);
3549 if ($val) echo 'Found a value of type '.$val->kindOf(); else echo 'Found invalid xml';
3550 </programlisting></para>
3555 <title>Automatic conversion of php functions into xmlrpc methods (and
3558 <para>For the extremely lazy coder, helper functions have been added
3559 that allow to convert a php function into an xmlrpc method, and a
3560 remotely exposed xmlrpc method into a local php function - or a set of
3561 methods into a php class. Note that these comes with many caveat.</para>
3564 <title>wrap_xmlrpc_method</title>
3568 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>wrap_xmlrpc_method</function></funcdef>
3570 <paramdef>$client</paramdef>
3572 <paramdef>$methodname</paramdef>
3574 <paramdef>$extra_options</paramdef>
3578 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>wrap_xmlrpc_method</function></funcdef>
3580 <paramdef>$client</paramdef>
3582 <paramdef>$methodname</paramdef>
3584 <paramdef>$signum</paramdef>
3586 <paramdef>$timeout</paramdef>
3588 <paramdef>$protocol</paramdef>
3590 <paramdef>$funcname</paramdef>
3594 <para>Given an xmlrpc server and a method name, creates a php wrapper
3595 function that will call the remote method and return results using
3596 native php types for both params and results. The generated php
3597 function will return an xmlrpcresp object for failed xmlrpc
3600 <para>The second syntax is deprecated, and is listed here only for
3601 backward compatibility.</para>
3603 <para>The server must support the
3604 <methodname>system.methodSignature</methodname> xmlrpc method call for
3605 this function to work.</para>
3607 <para>The <parameter>client</parameter> param must be a valid
3608 xmlrpc_client object, previously created with the address of the
3609 target xmlrpc server, and to which the preferred communication options
3610 have been set.</para>
3612 <para>The optional parameters can be passed as array key,value pairs
3613 in the <parameter>extra_options</parameter> param.</para>
3615 <para>The <parameter>signum</parameter> optional param has the purpose
3616 of indicating which method signature to use, if the given server
3617 method has multiple signatures (defaults to 0).</para>
3619 <para>The <parameter>timeout</parameter> and
3620 <parameter>protocol</parameter> optional params are the same as in the
3621 <methodname>xmlrpc_client::send()</methodname> method.</para>
3623 <para>If set, the optional <parameter>new_function_name</parameter>
3624 parameter indicates which name should be used for the generated
3625 function. In case it is not set the function name will be
3626 auto-generated.</para>
3628 <para>If the <literal>return_source</literal> optional parameter is
3629 set, the function will return the php source code to build the wrapper
3630 function, instead of evaluating it (useful to save the code and use it
3631 later as stand-alone xmlrpc client).</para>
3633 <para>If the <literal>encode_php_objs</literal> optional parameter is
3634 set, instances of php objects later passed as parameters to the newly
3635 created function will receive a 'special' treatment that allows the
3636 server to rebuild them as php objects instead of simple arrays. Note
3637 that this entails using a "slightly augmented" version of the xmlrpc
3638 protocol (ie. using element attributes), which might not be understood
3639 by xmlrpc servers implemented using other libraries.</para>
3641 <para>If the <literal>decode_php_objs</literal> optional parameter is
3642 set, instances of php objects that have been appropriately encoded by
3643 the server using a coordinate option will be deserialized as php
3644 objects instead of simple arrays (the same class definition should be
3645 present server side and client side).</para>
3647 <para><emphasis>Note that this might pose a security risk</emphasis>,
3648 since in order to rebuild the object instances their constructor
3649 method has to be invoked, and this means that the remote server can
3650 trigger execution of unforeseen php code on the client: not really a
3651 code injection, but almost. Please enable this option only when you
3652 trust the remote server.</para>
3654 <para>In case of an error during generation of the wrapper function,
3655 FALSE is returned, otherwise the name (or source code) of the new
3658 <para>Known limitations: server must support
3659 <methodname>system.methodsignature</methodname> for the wanted xmlrpc
3660 method; for methods that expose multiple signatures, only one can be
3661 picked; for remote calls with nested xmlrpc params, the caller of the
3662 generated php function has to encode on its own the params passed to
3663 the php function if these are structs or arrays whose (sub)members
3664 include values of type base64.</para>
3666 <para>Note: calling the generated php function 'might' be slow: a new
3667 xmlrpc client is created on every invocation and an xmlrpc-connection
3668 opened+closed. An extra 'debug' param is appended to the parameter
3669 list of the generated php function, useful for debugging
3672 <para>Example usage:</para>
3674 <programlisting language="php">
3675 $c = new xmlrpc_client('http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/server.php');
3677 $function = wrap_xmlrpc_method($client, 'examples.getStateName');
3680 die('Cannot introspect remote method');
3683 $statename = $function($a);
3684 if (is_a($statename, 'xmlrpcresp')) // call failed
3686 echo 'Call failed: '.$statename->faultCode().'. Calling again with debug on';
3687 $function($a, true);
3690 echo "OK, state nr. $stateno is $statename";
3695 <sect2 id="wrap_php_function">
3696 <title>wrap_php_function</title>
3700 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>wrap_php_function</function></funcdef>
3702 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$funcname</parameter></paramdef>
3704 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$wrapper_function_name</parameter></paramdef>
3706 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$extra_options</parameter></paramdef>
3710 <para>Given a user-defined PHP function, create a PHP 'wrapper'
3711 function that can be exposed as xmlrpc method from an xmlrpc_server
3712 object and called from remote clients, and return the appropriate
3713 definition to be added to a server's dispatch map.</para>
3715 <para>The optional <parameter>$wrapper_function_name</parameter>
3716 specifies the name that will be used for the auto-generated
3719 <para>Since php is a typeless language, to infer types of input and
3720 output parameters, it relies on parsing the javadoc-style comment
3721 block associated with the given function. Usage of xmlrpc native types
3722 (such as datetime.dateTime.iso8601 and base64) in the docblock @param
3723 tag is also allowed, if you need the php function to receive/send data
3724 in that particular format (note that base64 encoding/decoding is
3725 transparently carried out by the lib, while datetime vals are passed
3726 around as strings).</para>
3728 <para>Known limitations: only works for
3729 user-defined functions, not for PHP internal functions (reflection
3730 does not support retrieving number/type of params for those); the
3731 wrapped php function will not be able to programmatically return an
3732 xmlrpc error response.</para>
3734 <para>If the <literal>return_source</literal> optional parameter is
3735 set, the function will return the php source code to build the wrapper
3736 function, instead of evaluating it (useful to save the code and use it
3737 later in a stand-alone xmlrpc server). It will be in the stored in the
3738 <literal>source</literal> member of the returned array.</para>
3740 <para>If the <literal>suppress_warnings</literal> optional parameter
3741 is set, any runtime warning generated while processing the
3742 user-defined php function will be catched and not be printed in the
3743 generated xml response.</para>
3745 <para>If the <parameter>extra_options</parameter> array contains the
3746 <literal>encode_php_objs</literal> value, wrapped functions returning
3747 php objects will generate "special" xmlrpc responses: when the xmlrpc
3748 decoding of those responses is carried out by this same lib, using the
3749 appropriate param in php_xmlrpc_decode(), the objects will be
3752 <para>In short: php objects can be serialized, too (except for their
3753 resource members), using this function. Other libs might choke on the
3754 very same xml that will be generated in this case (i.e. it has a
3755 nonstandard attribute on struct element tags)</para>
3757 <para>If the <literal>decode_php_objs</literal> optional parameter is
3758 set, instances of php objects that have been appropriately encoded by
3759 the client using a coordinate option will be deserialized and passed
3760 to the user function as php objects instead of simple arrays (the same
3761 class definition should be present server side and client
3764 <para><emphasis>Note that this might pose a security risk</emphasis>,
3765 since in order to rebuild the object instances their constructor
3766 method has to be invoked, and this means that the remote client can
3767 trigger execution of unforeseen php code on the server: not really a
3768 code injection, but almost. Please enable this option only when you
3769 trust the remote clients.</para>
3771 <para>Example usage:</para>
3773 <para><programlisting language="php">/**
3774 * State name from state number decoder. NB: do NOT remove this comment block.
3775 * @param integer $stateno the state number
3776 * @return string the name of the state (or error description)
3778 function findstate($stateno)
3781 if (isset($stateNames[$stateno-1]))
3783 return $stateNames[$stateno-1];
3787 return "I don't have a state for the index '" . $stateno . "'";
3791 // wrap php function, build xmlrpc server
3793 $findstate_sig = wrap_php_function('findstate');
3795 $methods['examples.getStateName'] = $findstate_sig;
3796 $srv = new xmlrpc_server($methods);
3797 </programlisting></para>
3801 <sect1 id="deprecated">
3802 <title>Functions removed from the library</title>
3804 <para>The following two functions have been deprecated in version 1.1 of
3805 the library, and removed in version 2, in order to avoid conflicts with
3806 the EPI xml-rpc library, which also defines two functions with the same
3809 <para>To ease the transition to the new naming scheme and avoid breaking
3810 existing implementations, the following scheme has been adopted:
3813 <para>If EPI-XMLRPC is not active in the current PHP installation,
3814 the constant <literal>XMLRPC_EPI_ENABLED</literal> will be set to
3815 <literal>'0'</literal></para>
3819 <para>If EPI-XMLRPC is active in the current PHP installation, the
3820 constant <literal>XMLRPC_EPI_ENABLED</literal> will be set to
3821 <literal>'1'</literal></para>
3823 </itemizedlist></para>
3825 <para>The following documentation is kept for historical
3828 <sect2 id="xmlrpcdecode">
3829 <title>xmlrpc_decode</title>
3833 <funcdef><type>mixed</type><function>xmlrpc_decode</function></funcdef>
3835 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><parameter>$xmlrpc_val</parameter></paramdef>
3839 <para>Alias for php_xmlrpc_decode.</para>
3842 <sect2 id="xmlrpcencode">
3843 <title>xmlrpc_encode</title>
3847 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>xmlrpc_encode</function></funcdef>
3849 <paramdef><type>mixed</type><parameter>$phpval</parameter></paramdef>
3853 <para>Alias for php_xmlrpc_encode.</para>
3857 <sect1 id="debugging">
3858 <title>Debugging aids</title>
3861 <title>xmlrpc_debugmsg</title>
3865 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>xmlrpc_debugmsg</function></funcdef>
3867 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$debugstring</parameter></paramdef>
3871 <para>Sends the contents of <parameter>$debugstring</parameter> in XML
3872 comments in the server return payload. If a PHP client has debugging
3873 turned on, the user will be able to see server debug
3876 <para>Use this function in your methods so you can pass back
3877 diagnostic information. It is only available from
3878 <filename>xmlrpcs.inc</filename>.</para>
3883 <chapter id="reserved" xreflabel="Reserved methods">
3884 <title>Reserved methods</title>
3886 <para>In order to extend the functionality offered by XML-RPC servers
3887 without impacting on the protocol, reserved methods are supported in this
3890 <para>All methods starting with <function>system.</function> are
3891 considered reserved by the server. PHP for XML-RPC itself provides four
3892 special methods, detailed in this chapter.</para>
3894 <para>Note that all server objects will automatically respond to clients
3895 querying these methods, unless the property
3896 <property>allow_system_funcs</property> has been set to
3897 <constant>false</constant> before calling the
3898 <methodname>service()</methodname> method. This might pose a security risk
3899 if the server is exposed to public access, e.g. on the internet.</para>
3902 <title>system.getCapabilities</title>
3908 <title>system.listMethods</title>
3910 <para>This method may be used to enumerate the methods implemented by
3911 the XML-RPC server.</para>
3913 <para>The <function>system.listMethods</function> method requires no
3914 parameters. It returns an array of strings, each of which is the name of
3915 a method implemented by the server.</para>
3918 <sect1 id="sysmethodsig">
3919 <title>system.methodSignature</title>
3921 <para>This method takes one parameter, the name of a method implemented
3922 by the XML-RPC server.</para>
3924 <para>It returns an array of possible signatures for this method. A
3925 signature is an array of types. The first of these types is the return
3926 type of the method, the rest are parameters.</para>
3928 <para>Multiple signatures (i.e. overloading) are permitted: this is the
3929 reason that an array of signatures are returned by this method.</para>
3931 <para>Signatures themselves are restricted to the top level parameters
3932 expected by a method. For instance if a method expects one array of
3933 structs as a parameter, and it returns a string, its signature is simply
3934 "string, array". If it expects three integers, its signature is "string,
3935 int, int, int".</para>
3937 <para>For parameters that can be of more than one type, the "undefined"
3938 string is supported.</para>
3940 <para>If no signature is defined for the method, a not-array value is
3941 returned. Therefore this is the way to test for a non-signature, if
3942 <parameter>$resp</parameter> below is the response object from a method
3943 call to <function>system.methodSignature</function>:</para>
3945 <programlisting language="php">
3946 $v = $resp->value();
3947 if ($v->kindOf() != "array") {
3948 // then the method did not have a signature defined
3952 <para>See the <filename>introspect.php</filename> demo included in this
3953 distribution for an example of using this method.</para>
3956 <sect1 id="sysmethhelp">
3957 <title>system.methodHelp</title>
3959 <para>This method takes one parameter, the name of a method implemented
3960 by the XML-RPC server.</para>
3962 <para>It returns a documentation string describing the use of that
3963 method. If no such string is available, an empty string is
3966 <para>The documentation string may contain HTML markup.</para>
3970 <title>system.multicall</title>
3972 <para>This method takes one parameter, an array of 'request' struct
3973 types. Each request struct must contain a
3974 <parameter>methodName</parameter> member of type string and a
3975 <parameter>params</parameter> member of type array, and corresponds to
3976 the invocation of the corresponding method.</para>
3978 <para>It returns a response of type array, with each value of the array
3979 being either an error struct (containing the faultCode and faultString
3980 members) or the successful response value of the corresponding single
3985 <chapter id="examples" xreflabel="Examples">
3986 <title>Examples</title>
3988 <para>The best examples are to be found in the sample files included with
3989 the distribution. Some are included here.</para>
3991 <sect1 id="statename">
3992 <title>XML-RPC client: state name query</title>
3994 <para>Code to get the corresponding state name from a number (1-50) from
3995 the demo server available on SourceForge</para>
3997 <programlisting language="php">
3998 $m = new xmlrpcmsg('examples.getStateName',
3999 array(new xmlrpcval($HTTP_POST_VARS["stateno"], "int")));
4000 $c = new xmlrpc_client("/server.php", "phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net", 80);
4001 $r = $c->send($m);
4002 if (!$r->faultCode()) {
4003 $v = $r->value();
4004 print "State number " . htmlentities($HTTP_POST_VARS["stateno"]) . " is " .
4005 htmlentities($v->scalarval()) . "<BR>";
4006 print "<HR>I got this value back<BR><PRE>" .
4007 htmlentities($r->serialize()) . "</PRE><HR>\n";
4009 print "Fault <BR>";
4010 print "Code: " . htmlentities($r->faultCode()) . "<BR>" .
4011 "Reason: '" . htmlentities($r->faultString()) . "'<BR>";
4017 <title>Executing a multicall call</title>
4019 <para>To be documented...</para>
4024 <title>Frequently Asked Questions</title>
4027 <title>How to send custom XML as payload of a method call</title>
4029 <para>Unfortunately, at the time the XML-RPC spec was designed, support
4030 for namespaces in XML was not as ubiquitous as it is now. As a
4031 consequence, no support was provided in the protocol for embedding XML
4032 elements from other namespaces into an xmlrpc request.</para>
4034 <para>To send an XML "chunk" as payload of a method call or response,
4035 two options are available: either send the complete XML block as a
4036 string xmlrpc value, or as a base64 value. Since the '<' character in
4037 string values is encoded as '&lt;' in the xml payload of the method
4038 call, the XML string will not break the surrounding xmlrpc, unless
4039 characters outside of the assumed character set are used. The second
4040 method has the added benefits of working independently of the charset
4041 encoding used for the xml to be transmitted, and preserving exactly
4042 whitespace, whilst incurring in some extra message length and cpu load
4043 (for carrying out the base64 encoding/decoding).</para>
4047 <title>Is there any limitation on the size of the requests / responses
4048 that can be successfully sent?</title>
4050 <para>Yes. But I have no hard figure to give; it most likely will depend
4051 on the version of PHP in usage and its configuration.</para>
4053 <para>Keep in mind that this library is not optimized for speed nor for
4054 memory usage. Better alternatives exist when there are strict
4055 requirements on throughput or resource usage, such as the php native
4056 xmlrpc extension (see the PHP manual for more information).</para>
4058 <para>Keep in mind also that HTTP is probably not the best choice in
4059 such a situation, and XML is a deadly enemy. CSV formatted data over
4060 socket would be much more efficient.</para>
4062 <para>If you really need to move a massive amount of data around, and
4063 you are crazy enough to do it using phpxmlrpc, your best bet is to
4064 bypass usage of the xmlrpcval objects, at least in the decoding phase,
4065 and have the server (or client) object return to the calling function
4066 directly php values (see <varname>xmlrpc_client::return_type</varname>
4067 and <varname>xmlrpc_server::functions_parameters_type</varname> for more
4072 <title>My server (client) returns an error whenever the client (server)
4073 returns accented characters</title>
4075 <para>To be documented...</para>
4079 <title>How to enable long-lasting method calls</title>
4081 <para>To be documented...</para>
4085 <title>My client returns "XML-RPC Fault #2: Invalid return payload:
4086 enable debugging to examine incoming payload": what should I do?</title>
4088 <para>The response you are seeing is a default error response that the
4089 client object returns to the php application when the server did not
4090 respond to the call with a valid xmlrpc response.</para>
4092 <para>The most likely cause is that you are not using the correct URL
4093 when creating the client object, or you do not have appropriate access
4094 rights to the web page you are requesting, or some other common http
4095 misconfiguration.</para>
4097 <para>To find out what the server is really returning to your client,
4098 you have to enable the debug mode of the client, using
4099 $client->setdebug(1);</para>
4103 <title>How can I save to a file the xml of the xmlrpc responses received
4104 from servers?</title>
4106 <para>If what you need is to save the responses received from the server
4107 as xml, you have two options:</para>
4109 <para>1- use the serialize() method on the response object.</para>
4111 <programlisting language="php">
4112 $resp = $client->send($msg);
4113 if (!$resp->faultCode())
4114 $data_to_be_saved = $resp->serialize();
4117 <para>Note that this will not be 100% accurate, since the xml generated
4118 by the response object can be different from the xml received,
4119 especially if there is some character set conversion involved, or such
4120 (eg. if you receive an empty string tag as <string/>, serialize()
4121 will output <string></string>), or if the server sent back
4122 as response something invalid (in which case the xml generated client
4123 side using serialize() will correspond to the error response generated
4124 internally by the lib).</para>
4126 <para>2 - set the client object to return the raw xml received instead
4127 of the decoded objects:</para>
4129 <programlisting language="php">
4130 $client = new xmlrpc_client($url);
4131 $client->return_type = 'xml';
4132 $resp = $client->send($msg);
4133 if (!$resp->faultCode())
4134 $data_to_be_saved = $resp->value();
4137 <para>Note that using this method the xml response response will not be
4138 parsed at all by the library, only the http communication protocol will
4139 be checked. This means that xmlrpc responses sent by the server that
4140 would have generated an error response on the client (eg. malformed xml,
4141 responses that have faultcode set, etc...) now will not be flagged as
4142 invalid, and you might end up saving not valid xml but random
4147 <title>Can I use the ms windows character set?</title>
4149 <para>If the data your application is using comes from a Microsoft
4150 application, there are some chances that the character set used to
4151 encode it is CP1252 (the same might apply to data received from an
4152 external xmlrpc server/client, but it is quite rare to find xmlrpc
4153 toolkits that encode to CP1252 instead of UTF8). It is a character set
4154 which is "almost" compatible with ISO 8859-1, but for a few extra
4157 <para>PHP-XMLRPC only supports the ISO 8859-1 and UTF8 character sets.
4158 The net result of this situation is that those extra characters will not
4159 be properly encoded, and will be received at the other end of the
4160 XML-RPC transmission as "garbled data". Unfortunately the library cannot
4161 provide real support for CP1252 because of limitations in the PHP 4 xml
4162 parser. Luckily, we tried our best to support this character set anyway,
4163 and, since version 2.2.1, there is some form of support, left commented
4166 <para>To properly encode outgoing data that is natively in CP1252, you
4167 will have to uncomment all relative code in the file
4168 <filename>xmlrpc.inc</filename> (you can search for the string "1252"),
4169 then set <code>$GLOBALS['xmlrpc_internalencoding']='CP1252';</code>
4170 Please note that all incoming data will then be fed to your application
4171 as UTF-8 to avoid any potential data loss.</para>
4175 <title>Does the library support using cookies / http sessions?</title>
4177 <para>In short: yes, but a little coding is needed to make it
4180 <para>The code below uses sessions to e.g. let the client store a value
4181 on the server and retrieve it later.</para>
4183 <para><programlisting>
4184 $resp = $client->send(new xmlrpcmsg('registervalue', array(new xmlrpcval('foo'), new xmlrpcval('bar'))));
4185 if (!$resp->faultCode())
4187 $cookies = $resp->cookies();
4188 if (array_key_exists('PHPSESSID', $cookies)) // nb: make sure to use the correct session cookie name
4190 $session_id = $cookies['PHPSESSID']['value'];
4192 // do some other stuff here...
4194 $client->setcookie('PHPSESSID', $session_id);
4195 $val = $client->send(new xmlrpcmsg('getvalue', array(new xmlrpcval('foo')));
4198 </programlisting>Server-side sessions are handled normally like in any other
4199 php application. Please see the php manual for more information about
4202 <para>NB: unlike web browsers, not all xmlrpc clients support usage of
4203 http cookies. If you have troubles with sessions and control only the
4204 server side of the communication, please check with the makers of the
4205 xmlrpc client in use.</para>
4209 <appendix id="integration">
4210 <title>Integration with the PHP xmlrpc extension</title>
4212 <para>To be documented more...</para>
4214 <para>In short: for the fastest execution possible, you can enable the php
4215 native xmlrpc extension, and use it in conjunction with phpxmlrpc. The
4216 following code snippet gives an example of such integration</para>
4218 <programlisting language="php">
4219 /*** client side ***/
4220 $c = new xmlrpc_client('http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/server.php');
4222 // tell the client to return raw xml as response value
4223 $c->return_type = 'xml';
4225 // let the native xmlrpc extension take care of encoding request parameters
4226 $r = $c->send(xmlrpc_encode_request('examples.getStateName', $_POST['stateno']));
4228 if ($r->faultCode())
4229 // HTTP transport error
4230 echo 'Got error '.$r->faultCode();
4233 // HTTP request OK, but XML returned from server not parsed yet
4234 $v = xmlrpc_decode($r->value());
4235 // check if we got a valid xmlrpc response from server
4237 echo 'Got invalid response';
4239 // check if server sent a fault response
4240 if (xmlrpc_is_fault($v))
4241 echo 'Got xmlrpc fault '.$v['faultCode'];
4243 echo'Got response: '.htmlentities($v);
4248 <appendix id="substitution">
4249 <title>Substitution of the PHP xmlrpc extension</title>
4251 <para>Yet another interesting situation is when you are using a ready-made
4252 php application, that provides support for the XMLRPC protocol via the
4253 native php xmlrpc extension, but the extension is not available on your
4254 php install (e.g. because of shared hosting constraints).</para>
4256 <para>Since version 2.1, the PHP-XMLRPC library provides a compatibility
4257 layer that aims to be 100% compliant with the xmlrpc extension API. This
4258 means that any code written to run on the extension should obtain the
4259 exact same results, albeit using more resources and a longer processing
4260 time, using the PHP-XMLRPC library and the extension compatibility module.
4261 The module is part of the EXTRAS package, available as a separate download
4262 from the sourceforge.net website, since version 0.2</para>
4265 <appendix id="enough">
4266 <title>'Enough of xmlrpcvals!': new style library usage</title>
4268 <para>To be documented...</para>
4270 <para>In the meantime, see docs about xmlrpc_client::return_type and
4271 xmlrpc_server::functions_parameters_types, as well as php_xmlrpc_encode,
4272 php_xmlrpc_decode and php_xmlrpc_decode_xml</para>
4275 <appendix id="debugger">
4276 <title>Usage of the debugger</title>
4278 <para>A webservice debugger is included in the library to help during
4279 development and testing.</para>
4281 <para>The interface should be self-explicative enough to need little
4282 documentation.</para>
4284 <para><graphic align="center" fileref="debugger.gif"
4285 format="GIF" /></para>
4287 <para>The most useful feature of the debugger is without doubt the "Show
4288 debug info" option. It allows to have a screen dump of the complete http
4289 communication between client and server, including the http headers as
4290 well as the request and response payloads, and is invaluable when
4291 troubleshooting problems with charset encoding, authentication or http
4294 <para>The debugger can take advantage of the JSONRPC library extension, to
4295 allow debugging of JSON-RPC webservices, and of the JS-XMLRPC library
4296 visual editor to allow easy mouse-driven construction of the payload for
4297 remote methods. Both components have to be downloaded separately from the
4298 sourceforge.net web pages and copied to the debugger directory to enable
4299 the extra functionality:</para>
4301 <para><itemizedlist>
4303 <para>to enable jsonrpc functionality, download the PHP-XMLRPC
4304 EXTRAS package, and copy the file <filename>jsonrpc.inc</filename>
4305 either to the same directory as the debugger or somewhere in your
4306 php include path</para>
4308 </itemizedlist><itemizedlist>
4310 <para>to enable the visual value editing dialog, download the
4311 JS-XMLRPC library, and copy somewhere in the web root files
4312 <filename>visualeditor.php</filename>,
4313 <filename>visualeditor.css</filename> and the folders
4314 <filename>yui</filename> and <filename>img</filename>. Then edit the
4315 debugger file <filename>controller.php</filename> and set
4316 appropriately the variable <varname>$editorpath</varname>.</para>
4318 </itemizedlist></para>
4321 <!-- Keep this comment at the end of the file
4326 sgml-minimize-attributes:nil
4327 sgml-always-quote-attributes:t
4330 sgml-parent-document:nil
4331 sgml-exposed-tags:nil
4332 sgml-local-catalogs:nil
4333 sgml-local-ecat-files:nil
4334 sgml-namecase-general:t
4335 sgml-general-insert-case:lower