1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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9 <title>XML-RPC for PHP</title>
11 <subtitle>version 3.1.0</subtitle>
14 <date>July 1, 2017</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 by removing the deprecation warnings</para>
224 <para>addition of a 'setSSLVersion' method to the client class</para>
227 </itemizedlist></para>
235 <para>fixed: the library does not decode correctly LATIN-1 requests/responses if the character set is not set in the xml prolog</para>
239 <para>fixed: the debugger sends incorrect requests when the payload includes LATIN-1 characters</para>
243 <para>fixed: the client can not call remote methods which use LATIN-1 or UTF8 characters in their names</para>
246 </itemizedlist></para>
252 <para><emphasis>Note:</emphasis> this is the last release of the library that will support PHP 5.1 and up.
253 Future releases will target php 5.3 as minimum supported version.</para>
257 <para>when using curl and keepalive, reset curl handle if we did not get back an http 200 response (eg a 302)</para>
261 <para>omit port on http 'Host' header if it is 80</para>
265 <para>test suite allows interrogating https servers ignoring their certs</para>
269 <para>method setAcceptedCompression was failing to disable reception of compressed responses if the
270 client supported them</para>
273 </itemizedlist></para>
277 <title>3.0.0 beta</title>
279 <para>This is the first release of the library to only support PHP 5.
280 Some legacy code has been removed, and support for features such as
281 exceptions and dateTime objects introduced.</para>
283 <para>The "beta" tag is meant to indicate the fact that the refactoring
284 has been more widespread than in precedent releases and that more
285 changes are likely to be introduced with time - the library is still
286 considered to be production quality.</para>
290 <para>improved: removed all usage of php functions deprecated in
291 php 5.3, usage of assign-by-ref when creating new objects
296 <para>improved: add support for the <ex:nil/> tag used by
297 the apache library, both in input and output</para>
301 <para>improved: add support for <classname>dateTime</classname>
302 objects in both in <function>php_xmlrpc_encode</function> and as
303 parameter for constructor of
304 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname></para>
308 <para>improved: add support for timestamps as parameter for
309 constructor of <classname>xmlrpcval</classname></para>
313 <para>improved: add option 'dates_as_objects' to
314 <function>php_xmlrpc_decode</function> to return
315 <classname>dateTime</classname> objects for xmlrpc
320 <para>improved: add new method
321 <methodname>SetCurlOptions</methodname> to
322 <classname>xmrlpc_client</classname> to allow extra flexibility in
323 tweaking http config, such as explicitly binding to an ip
328 <para>improved: add new method
329 <methodname>SetUserAgent</methodname> to
330 <classname>xmrlpc_client</classname> to to allow having different
331 user-agent http headers</para>
335 <para>improved: add a new member variable in server class to allow
336 fine-tuning of the encoding of returned values when the server is
337 in 'phpvals' mode</para>
341 <para>improved: allow servers in 'xmlrpcvals' mode to also
342 register plain php functions by defining them in the dispatch map
343 with an added option</para>
347 <para>improved: catch exceptions thrown during execution of php
348 functions exposed as methods by the server</para>
352 <para>fixed: bad encoding if same object is encoded twice using
353 php_xmlrpc_encode</para>
355 </itemizedlist></para>
361 <para><emphasis>Note:</emphasis> this might the last release of the
362 library that will support PHP 4. Future releases (if any) should target
363 php 5.0 as minimum supported version.</para>
367 <para>fixed: encoding of utf-8 characters outside of the BMP
372 <para>fixed: character set declarations surrounded by double
373 quotes were not recognized in http headers</para>
377 <para>fixed: be more tolerant in detection of charset in http
382 <para>fixed: fix detection of zlib.output_compression</para>
386 <para>fixed: use feof() to test if socket connections are to be
387 closed instead of the number of bytes read (rare bug when
388 communicating with some servers)</para>
392 <para>fixed: format floating point values using the correct
393 decimal separator even when php locale is set to one that uses
398 <para>fixed: improve robustness of the debugger when parsing weird
399 results from non-compliant servers</para>
403 <para>php warning when receiving 'false' in a bool value</para>
407 <para>improved: allow the add_to_map server method to add docs for
408 single params too</para>
412 <para>improved: added the possibility to wrap for exposure as
413 xmlrpc methods plain php class methods, object methods and even
416 </itemizedlist></para>
424 <para>fixed: work aroung bug in php 5.2.2 which broke support of
425 HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA</para>
429 <para>fixed: is_dir parameter of setCaCertificate() method is
434 <para>fixed: a php warning in xmlrpc_client creator method</para>
438 <para>fixed: parsing of '1e+1' as valid float</para>
442 <para>fixed: allow errorlevel 3 to work when prev. error handler was
443 a static method</para>
447 <para>fixed: usage of client::setcookie() for multiple cookies in
452 <para>improved: support for CP1252 charset is not part or the
453 library but almost possible</para>
457 <para>improved: more info when curl is enabled and debug mode is
468 <para>fixed: debugger errors on php installs with magic_quotes_gpc
473 <para>fixed: support for https connections via proxy</para>
477 <para>fixed: wrap_xmlrpc_method() generated code failed to properly
478 encode php objects</para>
482 <para>improved: slightly faster encoding of data which is internally
487 <para>improved: debugger always generates a 'null' id for jsonrpc if
492 <para>new: debugger can take advantage of a graphical value builder
493 (it has to be downloaded separately, as part of jsxmlrpc package.
494 See Appendix D for more details)</para>
498 <para>new: support for the <NIL/> xmlrpc extension. see below
499 for more details</para>
503 <para>new: server support for the system.getCapabilities xmlrpc
508 <para>new: <function><link
509 linkend="wrap_xmlrpc_method">wrap_xmlrpc_method()</link></function>
510 accepts two new options: debug and return_on_fault</para>
520 <para>The <function>wrap_php_function</function> and
521 <function>wrap_xmlrpc_method</function> functions have been moved
522 out of the base library file <filename>xmlrpc.inc</filename> into
523 a file of their own: <filename>xmlrpc_wrappers.inc</filename>. You
524 will have to include() / require() it in your scripts if you have
525 been using those functions. For increased security, the automatic
526 rebuilding of php object instances out of received xmlrpc structs
527 in <function>wrap_xmlrpc_method()</function> has been disabled
528 (but it can be optionally re-enabled). Both
529 <function>wrap_php_function()</function> and
530 <function>wrap_xmlrpc_method()</function> functions accept many
531 more options to fine tune their behaviour, including one to return
532 the php code to be saved and later used as standalone php
537 <para>The constructor of xmlrpcval() values has seen some internal
538 changes, and it will not throw a php warning anymore when invoked
539 using an unknown xmlrpc type: the error will only be written to
540 php error log. Also <code>new xmlrpcval('true', 'boolean')</code>
541 is not supported anymore</para>
545 <para>The new function
546 <function>php_xmlrpc_decode_xml()</function> will take the xml
547 representation of either an xmlrpc request, response or single
548 value and return the corresponding php-xmlrpc object
553 <para>A new function <function>wrap_xmlrpc_server()</function>has
554 been added, to wrap all (or some) of the methods exposed by a
555 remote xmlrpc server into a php class</para>
559 <para>A new file has been added:
560 <filename>verify_compat.php</filename>, to help users diagnose the
561 level of compliance of their php installation with the
566 <para>Restored compatibility with php 4.0.5 (for those poor souls
567 still stuck on it)</para>
571 <para>Method <methodname>xmlrpc_server->service()</methodname>
572 now returns a value: either the response payload or xmlrpcresp
573 object instance</para>
578 <methodname>xmlrpc_server->add_to_map()</methodname> now
579 accepts xmlrpc methods with no param definitions</para>
583 <para>Documentation for single parameters of exposed methods can
584 be added to the dispatch map (and turned into html docs in
585 conjunction with a future release of the 'extras' package)</para>
589 <para>Full response payload is saved into xmlrpcresp object for
590 further debugging</para>
594 <para>The debugger can now generate code that wraps a remote
595 method into a php function (works for jsonrpc, too); it also has
596 better support for being activated via a single GET call (e.g. for
597 integration into other tools)</para>
601 <para>Stricter parsing of incoming xmlrpc messages: two more
602 invalid cases are now detected (double <literal>data</literal>
603 element inside <literal>array</literal> and
604 <literal>struct</literal>/<literal>array</literal> after scalar
605 inside <literal>value</literal> element)</para>
609 <para>More logging of errors in a lot of situations</para>
613 <para>Javadoc documentation of lib files (almost) complete</para>
617 <para>Many performance tweaks and code cleanups, plus the usual
618 crop of bugs fixed (see NEWS file for complete list of
623 <para>Lib internals have been modified to provide better support
624 for grafting extra functionality on top of it. Stay tuned for
625 future releases of the EXTRAS package (or go read Appendix
628 </itemizedlist></para>
632 <title>2.0 final</title>
636 <para>Added to the client class the possibility to use Digest and
637 NTLM authentication methods (when using the CURL library) for
638 connecting to servers and NTLM for connecting to proxies</para>
642 <para>Added to the client class the possibility to specify
643 alternate certificate files/directories for authenticating the
644 peer with when using HTTPS communication</para>
648 <para>Reviewed all examples and added a new demo file, containing
649 a proxy to forward xmlrpc requests to other servers (useful e.g.
650 for ajax coding)</para>
654 <para>The debugger has been upgraded to reflect the new client
659 <para>All known bugs have been squashed, and the lib is more
660 tolerant than ever of commonly-found mistakes</para>
662 </itemizedlist></para>
666 <title>2.0 Release candidate 3</title>
670 <para>Added to server class the property
671 <property>functions_parameters_type</property>, that allows the
672 server to register plain php functions as xmlrpc methods (i.e.
673 functions that do not take an xmlrpcmsg object as unique
678 <para>let server and client objects serialize calls using a
679 specified character set encoding for the produced xml instead of
680 US-ASCII (ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 supported)</para>
684 <para>let php_xmlrpc_decode accept xmlrpcmsg objects as valid
689 <para>'class::method' syntax is now accepted in the server
694 <para><function>xmlrpc_clent::SetDebug()</function> accepts
695 integer values instead of a boolean value, with debugging level 2
696 adding to the information printed to screen the complete client
699 </itemizedlist></para>
703 <title>2.0 Release candidate 2</title>
707 <para>Added a new property of the client object:
708 <code>xmlrpc_client->return_type</code>, indicating whether
709 calls to the send() method will return xmlrpcresp objects whose
710 value() is an xmlrpcval object, a php value (automatically
711 decoded) or the raw xml received from the server.</para>
715 <para>Added in the extras dir. two new library file:
716 <filename>jsonrpc.inc</filename> and
717 <filename>jsonrpcs.inc</filename> containing new classes that
718 implement support for the json-rpc protocol (alpha quality
723 <para>Added a new client method: <code>setKey($key,
724 $keypass)</code> to be used in HTTPS connections</para>
728 <para>Added a new file containing some benchmarks in the testsuite
731 </itemizedlist></para>
735 <title>2.0 Release candidate 1</title>
739 <para>Support for HTTP proxies (new method:
740 <code>xmlrpc_client::setProxy()</code>)</para>
744 <para>Support HTTP compression of both requests and responses.
745 Clients can specify what kind of compression they accept for
746 responses between deflate/gzip/any, and whether to compress the
747 requests. Servers by default compress responses to clients that
748 explicitly declare support for compression (new methods:
749 <code>xmlrpc_client::setAcceptedCompression()</code>,
750 <code>xmlrpc_client::setRequestCompression()</code>). Note that the
751 ZLIB php extension needs to be enabled in PHP to support
756 <para>Implement HTTP 1.1 connections, but only if CURL is enabled
757 (added an extra parameter to
758 <code>xmlrpc_client::xmlrpc_client</code> to set the desired HTTP
759 protocol at creation time and a new supported value for the last
760 parameter of <code>xmlrpc_client::send</code>, which now can be
761 safely omitted if it has been specified at creation time)</para>
763 <para>With PHP versions greater than 4.3.8 keep-alives are enabled
764 by default for HTTP 1.1 connections. This should yield faster
765 execution times when making multiple calls in sequence to the same
766 xml-rpc server from a single client.</para>
770 <para>Introduce support for cookies. Cookies to be sent to the
771 server with a request can be set using
772 <code>xmlrpc_client::setCookie()</code>, while cookies received from
773 the server are found in <code>xmlrpcresp::cookies()</code>. It is
774 left to the user to check for validity of received cookies and
775 decide whether they apply to successive calls or not.</para>
779 <para>Better support for detecting different character set encodings
780 of xml-rpc requests and responses: both client and server objects
781 will correctly detect the charset encoding of received xml, and use
782 an appropriate xml parser.</para>
784 <para>Supported encodings are US-ASCII, UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1.</para>
788 <para>Added one new xmlrpcmsg constructor syntax, allowing usage of
789 a single string with the complete URL of the target server</para>
793 <para>Convert xml-rpc boolean values into native php values instead
798 <para>Force the <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> function to properly
799 encode numerically indexed php arrays into xml-rpc arrays
800 (numerically indexed php arrays always start with a key of 0 and
801 increment keys by values of 1)</para>
805 <para>Prevent the <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> function from
806 further re-encoding any objects of class <code>xmlrpcval</code> that
807 are passed to it. This allows to call the function with arguments
808 consisting of mixed php values / xmlrpcval objects.</para>
812 <para>Allow a server to NOT respond to system.* method calls
813 (setting the <code>$server->allow_system_funcs</code>
818 <para>Implement a new xmlrpcval method to determine if a value of
819 type struct has a member of a given name without having to loop
820 trough all members: <code>xmlrpcval::structMemExists()</code></para>
824 <para>Expand methods <code>xmlrpcval::addArray</code>,
825 <code>addScalar</code> and <code>addStruct</code> allowing extra php
826 values to be added to xmlrpcval objects already formed.</para>
830 <para>Let the <code>xmlrpc_client::send</code> method accept an XML
831 string for sending instead of an xmlrpcmsg object, to facilitate
832 debugging and integration with the php native xmlrpc
837 <para>Extend the <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> and
838 <code>php_xmlrpc_decode</code> functions to allow serialization and
839 rebuilding of PHP objects. To successfully rebuild a serialized
840 object, the object class must be defined in the deserializing end of
841 the transfer. Note that object members of type resource will be
842 deserialized as NULL values.</para>
844 <para>Note that his has been implemented adding a "php_class"
845 attribute to xml representation of xmlrpcval of STRUCT type, which,
846 strictly speaking, breaks the xml-rpc spec. Other xmlrpc
847 implementations are supposed to ignore such an attribute (unless
848 they implement a brain-dead custom xml parser...), so it should be
849 safe enabling it in heterogeneous environments. The activation of
850 this feature is done by usage of an option passed as second
851 parameter to both <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> and
852 <code>php_xmlrpc_decode</code>.</para>
856 <para>Extend the <code>php_xmlrpc_encode</code> function to allow
857 automatic serialization of iso8601-conforming php strings as
858 datetime.iso8601 xmlrpcvals, by usage of an optional
863 <para>Added an automatic stub code generator for converting xmlrpc
864 methods to php functions and vice-versa.</para>
866 <para>This is done via two new functions:
867 <code>wrap_php_function</code> and <code>wrap_xmlrpc_method</code>,
868 and has many caveats, with php being a typeless language and
871 <para>With PHP versions lesser than 5.0.3 wrapping of php functions
872 into xmlrpc methods is not supported yet.</para>
876 <para>Allow object methods to be used in server dispatch map</para>
880 <para>Added a complete debugger solution, in the
881 <filename>debugger</filename> folder</para>
885 <para>Added configurable server-side debug messages, controlled by
886 the new method <code>xmlrpc_server::SetDebug()</code>. At level 0,
887 no debug messages are sent to the client; level 1 is the same as the
888 old behaviour; at level 2 a lot more info is echoed back to the
889 client, regarding the received call; at level 3 all warnings raised
890 during server processing are trapped (this prevents breaking the xml
891 to be echoed back to the client) and added to the debug info sent
892 back to the client</para>
896 <para>New XML parsing code, yields smaller memory footprint and
897 faster execution times, not to mention complete elimination of the
898 dreaded <filename>eval()</filename> construct, so prone to code
899 injection exploits</para>
903 <para>Rewritten most of the error messages, making text more
910 <chapter id="requirements">
911 <title>System Requirements</title>
913 <para>The library has been designed with goals of scalability and backward
914 compatibility. As such, it supports a wide range of PHP installs. Note
915 that not all features of the lib are available in every
916 configuration.</para>
918 <para>The <emphasis>minimum supported</emphasis> PHP version is
921 <para>If you wish to use SSL or HTTP 1.1 to communicate with remote
922 servers, you need the "curl" extension compiled into your PHP
925 <para>The "xmlrpc" native extension is not required to be compiled into
926 your PHP installation, but if it is, there will be no interference with
927 the operation of this library.</para>
930 <chapter id="manifest">
931 <title>Files in the distribution</title>
935 <glossterm>lib/xmlrpc.inc</glossterm>
938 <para>the XML-RPC classes. <function>include()</function> this in
939 your PHP files to use the classes.</para>
944 <glossterm>lib/xmlrpcs.inc</glossterm>
947 <para>the XML-RPC server class. <function>include()</function> this
948 in addition to xmlrpc.inc to get server functionality</para>
953 <glossterm>lib/xmlrpc_wrappers.inc</glossterm>
956 <para>helper functions to "automagically" convert plain php
957 functions to xmlrpc services and vice versa</para>
962 <glossterm>demo/server/proxy.php</glossterm>
965 <para>a sample server implementing xmlrpc proxy
966 functionality.</para>
971 <glossterm>demo/server/server.php</glossterm>
974 <para>a sample server hosting various demo functions, as well as a
975 full suite of functions used for interoperability testing. It is
976 used by testsuite.php (see below) for unit testing the library, and
977 is not to be copied literally into your production servers</para>
982 <glossterm>demo/client/client.php, demo/client/agesort.php,
983 demo/client/which.php</glossterm>
986 <para>client code to exercise some of the functions in server.php,
987 including the <function>interopEchoTests.whichToolkit</function>
993 <glossterm>demo/client/wrap.php</glossterm>
996 <para>client code to illustrate 'wrapping' of remote methods into
997 php functions.</para>
1002 <glossterm>demo/client/introspect.php</glossterm>
1005 <para>client code to illustrate usage of introspection capabilities
1006 offered by server.php.</para>
1011 <glossterm>demo/client/mail.php</glossterm>
1014 <para>client code to illustrate usage of an xmlrpc-to-email gateway
1015 using Dave Winer's XML-RPC server at userland.com.</para>
1020 <glossterm>demo/client/zopetest.php</glossterm>
1023 <para>example client code that queries an xmlrpc server built in
1029 <glossterm>demo/vardemo.php</glossterm>
1032 <para>examples of how to construct xmlrpcval types</para>
1037 <glossterm>demo/demo1.txt, demo/demo2.txt, demo/demo3.txt</glossterm>
1040 <para>XML-RPC responses captured in a file for testing purposes (you
1041 can use these to test the
1042 <function>xmlrpcmsg->parseResponse()</function> method).</para>
1047 <glossterm>demo/server/discuss.php,
1048 demo/client/comment.php</glossterm>
1051 <para>Software used in the PHP chapter of <xref
1052 linkend="jellyfish" /> to provide a comment server and allow the
1053 attachment of comments to stories from Meerkat's data store.</para>
1058 <glossterm>test/testsuite.php, test/parse_args.php</glossterm>
1061 <para>A unit test suite for this software package. If you do
1062 development on this software, please consider submitting tests for
1068 <glossterm>test/benchmark.php</glossterm>
1071 <para>A (very limited) benchmarking suite for this software package.
1072 If you do development on this software, please consider submitting
1073 benchmarks for this suite.</para>
1078 <glossterm>test/phpunit.php, test/PHPUnit/*.php</glossterm>
1081 <para>An (incomplete) version PEAR's unit test framework for PHP.
1082 The complete package can be found at <ulink
1083 url="http://pear.php.net/package/PHPUnit">http://pear.php.net/package/PHPUnit</ulink></para>
1088 <glossterm>test/verify_compat.php</glossterm>
1091 <para>Script designed to help the user to verify the level of
1092 compatibility of the library with the current php install</para>
1097 <glossterm>extras/test.pl, extras/test.py</glossterm>
1100 <para>Perl and Python programs to exercise server.php to test that
1101 some of the methods work.</para>
1106 <glossterm>extras/workspace.testPhpServer.fttb</glossterm>
1109 <para>Frontier scripts to exercise the demo server. Thanks to Dave
1110 Winer for permission to include these. See <ulink
1111 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/discuss/msgReader$853">Dave's
1112 announcement of these.</ulink></para>
1117 <glossterm>extras/rsakey.pem</glossterm>
1120 <para>A test certificate key for the SSL support, which can be used
1121 to generate dummy certificates. It has the passphrase "test."</para>
1128 <title>Known bugs and limitations</title>
1130 <para>This started out as a bare framework. Many "nice" bits haven't been
1131 put in yet. Specifically, very little type validation or coercion has been
1132 put in. PHP being a loosely-typed language, this is going to have to be
1133 done explicitly (in other words: you can call a lot of library functions
1134 passing them arguments of the wrong type and receive an error message only
1135 much further down the code, where it will be difficult to
1138 <para>dateTime.iso8601 is supported opaquely. It can't be done natively as
1139 the XML-RPC specification explicitly forbids passing of timezone
1140 specifiers in ISO8601 format dates. You can, however, use the <xref
1141 linkend="iso8601encode" /> and <xref linkend="iso8601decode" /> functions
1142 to do the encoding and decoding for you.</para>
1144 <para>Very little HTTP response checking is performed (e.g. HTTP redirects
1145 are not followed and the Content-Length HTTP header, mandated by the
1146 xml-rpc spec, is not validated); cookie support still involves quite a bit
1147 of coding on the part of the user.</para>
1149 <para>If a specific character set encoding other than US-ASCII, ISO-8859-1
1150 or UTF-8 is received in the HTTP header or XML prologue of xml-rpc request
1151 or response messages then it will be ignored for the moment, and the
1152 content will be parsed as if it had been encoded using the charset defined
1153 by <xref linkend="xmlrpc-defencoding" /></para>
1155 <para>Support for receiving from servers version 1 cookies (i.e.
1156 conforming to RFC 2965) is quite incomplete, and might cause unforeseen
1160 <chapter id="support">
1161 <title>Support</title>
1164 <title>Online Support</title>
1166 <para>XML-RPC for PHP is offered "as-is" without any warranty or
1167 commitment to support. However, informal advice and help is available
1168 via the XML-RPC for PHP website and mailing list and from
1173 <para>The <emphasis>XML-RPC for PHP</emphasis> development is hosted
1175 url="https://github.com/gggeek/phpxmlrpc">github.com/gggeek/phpxmlrpc</ulink>.
1176 Bugs, feature requests and patches can be posted to the <ulink
1177 url="https://github.com/gggeek/phpxmlrpc/issues">project's
1178 website</ulink>.</para>
1182 <para>The <emphasis>PHP XML-RPC interest mailing list</emphasis> is
1183 run by the author. More details <ulink
1184 url="http://lists.gnomehack.com/mailman/listinfo/phpxmlrpc">can be
1185 found here</ulink>.</para>
1189 <para>For more general XML-RPC questions, there is a Yahoo! Groups
1190 <ulink url="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xml-rpc/">XML-RPC mailing
1191 list</ulink>.</para>
1196 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/discuss">XML-RPC.com</ulink> discussion
1197 group is a useful place to get help with using XML-RPC. This group
1198 is also gatewayed into the Yahoo! Groups mailing list.</para>
1203 <sect1 id="jellyfish" xreflabel="The Jellyfish Book">
1204 <title>The Jellyfish Book</title>
1206 <para><graphic align="right" depth="190" fileref="progxmlrpc.s.gif"
1207 format="GIF" width="145" />Together with Simon St.Laurent and Joe
1208 Johnston, Edd Dumbill wrote a book on XML-RPC for O'Reilly and
1209 Associates on XML-RPC. It features a rather fetching jellyfish on the
1212 <para>Complete details of the book are <ulink
1213 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progxmlrpc/">available from
1214 O'Reilly's web site.</ulink></para>
1216 <para>Edd is responsible for the chapter on PHP, which includes a worked
1217 example of creating a forum server, and hooking it up the O'Reilly's
1218 <ulink url="http://meerkat.oreillynet.com/">Meerkat</ulink> service in
1219 order to allow commenting on news stories from around the Web.</para>
1221 <para>If you've benefited from the effort that has been put into writing
1222 this software, then please consider buying the book!</para>
1226 <chapter id="apidocs">
1227 <title>Class documentation</title>
1229 <sect1 id="xmlrpcval" xreflabel="xmlrpcval">
1230 <title>xmlrpcval</title>
1232 <para>This is where a lot of the hard work gets done. This class enables
1233 the creation and encapsulation of values for XML-RPC.</para>
1235 <para>Ensure you've read the XML-RPC spec at <ulink
1236 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/stories/storyReader$7">http://www.xmlrpc.com/stories/storyReader$7</ulink>
1237 before reading on as it will make things clearer.</para>
1239 <para>The <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> class can store arbitrarily
1240 complicated values using the following types: <literal>i4 int boolean
1241 string double dateTime.iso8601 base64 array struct</literal>
1242 <literal>null</literal>. You should refer to the <ulink
1243 url="http://www.xmlrpc.com/spec">spec</ulink> for more information on
1244 what each of these types mean.</para>
1247 <title>Notes on types</title>
1252 <para>The type <classname>i4</classname> is accepted as a synonym
1253 for <classname>int</classname> when creating xmlrpcval objects. The
1254 xml parsing code will always convert <classname>i4</classname> to
1255 <classname>int</classname>: <classname>int</classname> is regarded
1256 by this implementation as the canonical name for this type.</para>
1260 <title>base64</title>
1262 <para>Base 64 encoding is performed transparently to the caller when
1263 using this type. Decoding is also transparent. Therefore you ought
1264 to consider it as a "binary" data type, for use when you want to
1265 pass data that is not 7-bit clean.</para>
1269 <title>boolean</title>
1271 <para>The php values <literal>true</literal> and
1272 <literal>1</literal> map to <literal>true</literal>. All other
1273 values (including the empty string) are converted to
1274 <literal>false</literal>.</para>
1278 <title>string</title>
1280 <para>Characters <, >, ', ", &, are encoded using their
1281 entity reference as &lt; &gt; &apos; &quot; and
1282 &amp; All other characters outside of the ASCII range are
1283 encoded using their character reference representation (e.g.
1284 &#200 for é). The XML-RPC spec recommends only encoding
1285 <literal>< &</literal> but this implementation goes further,
1286 for reasons explained by <ulink
1287 url="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#syntax">the XML 1.0
1288 recommendation</ulink>. In particular, using character reference
1289 representation has the advantage of producing XML that is valid
1290 independently of the charset encoding assumed.</para>
1296 <para>There is no support for encoding <literal>null</literal>
1297 values in the XML-RPC spec, but at least a couple of extensions (and
1298 many toolkits) do support it. Before using <literal>null</literal>
1299 values in your messages, make sure that the responding party accepts
1300 them, and uses the same encoding convention (see ...).</para>
1304 <sect2 id="xmlrpcval-creation" xreflabel="xmlrpcval constructors">
1305 <title>Creation</title>
1307 <para>The constructor is the normal way to create an
1308 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname>. The constructor can take these
1313 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type>new
1314 <function>xmlrpcval</function></funcdef>
1320 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type>new
1321 <function>xmlrpcval</function></funcdef>
1323 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$stringVal</parameter></paramdef>
1327 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type>new
1328 <function>xmlrpcval</function></funcdef>
1330 <paramdef><type>mixed</type><parameter>$scalarVal</parameter></paramdef>
1332 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$scalartyp</parameter></paramdef>
1336 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type>new
1337 <function>xmlrpcval</function></funcdef>
1339 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$arrayVal</parameter></paramdef>
1341 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$arraytyp</parameter></paramdef>
1345 <para>The first constructor creates an empty value, which must be
1346 altered using the methods <function>addScalar</function>,
1347 <function>addArray</function> or <function>addStruct</function> before
1348 it can be used.</para>
1350 <para>The second constructor creates a simple string value.</para>
1352 <para>The third constructor is used to create a scalar value. The
1353 second parameter must be a name of an XML-RPC type. Valid types are:
1354 "<literal>int</literal>", "<literal>boolean</literal>",
1355 "<literal>string</literal>", "<literal>double</literal>",
1356 "<literal>dateTime.iso8601</literal>", "<literal>base64</literal>" or
1359 <para>Examples:</para>
1361 <programlisting language="php">
1362 $myInt = new xmlrpcvalue(1267, "int");
1363 $myString = new xmlrpcvalue("Hello, World!", "string");
1364 $myBool = new xmlrpcvalue(1, "boolean");
1365 $myString2 = new xmlrpcvalue(1.24, "string"); // note: this will serialize a php float value as xmlrpc string
1368 <para>The fourth constructor form can be used to compose complex
1369 XML-RPC values. The first argument is either a simple array in the
1370 case of an XML-RPC <classname>array</classname> or an associative
1371 array in the case of a <classname>struct</classname>. The elements of
1372 the array <emphasis>must be <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects
1373 themselves</emphasis>.</para>
1375 <para>The second parameter must be either "<literal>array</literal>"
1376 or "<literal>struct</literal>".</para>
1378 <para>Examples:</para>
1380 <programlisting language="php">
1381 $myArray = new xmlrpcval(
1383 new xmlrpcval("Tom"),
1384 new xmlrpcval("Dick"),
1385 new xmlrpcval("Harry")
1390 $myStruct = new xmlrpcval(
1392 "name" => new xmlrpcval("Tom", "string"),
1393 "age" => new xmlrpcval(34, "int"),
1394 "address" => new xmlrpcval(
1396 "street" => new xmlrpcval("Fifht Ave", "string"),
1397 "city" => new xmlrpcval("NY", "string")
1404 <para>See the file <literal>vardemo.php</literal> in this distribution
1405 for more examples.</para>
1408 <sect2 id="xmlrpcval-methods" xreflabel="xmlrpcval methods">
1409 <title>Methods</title>
1412 <title>addScalar</title>
1416 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>addScalar</function></funcdef>
1418 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$stringVal</parameter></paramdef>
1422 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>addScalar</function></funcdef>
1424 <paramdef><type>mixed</type><parameter>$scalarVal</parameter></paramdef>
1426 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$scalartyp</parameter></paramdef>
1430 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an empty
1431 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> this method makes it a scalar
1432 value, and sets that value.</para>
1434 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is already a scalar value, then
1435 no more scalars can be added and <literal>0</literal> is
1438 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an xmlrpcval of type array,
1439 the php value <parameter>$scalarval</parameter> is added as its last
1442 <para>If all went OK, <literal>1</literal> is returned, otherwise
1443 <literal>0</literal>.</para>
1447 <title>addArray</title>
1451 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>addArray</function></funcdef>
1453 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$arrayVal</parameter></paramdef>
1457 <para>The argument is a simple (numerically indexed) array. The
1458 elements of the array <emphasis>must be
1459 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects
1460 themselves</emphasis>.</para>
1462 <para>Turns an empty <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> into an
1463 <classname>array</classname> with contents as specified by
1464 <parameter>$arrayVal</parameter>.</para>
1466 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an xmlrpcval of type array,
1467 the elements of <parameter>$arrayVal</parameter> are appended to the
1468 existing ones.</para>
1470 <para>See the fourth constructor form for more information.</para>
1472 <para>If all went OK, <literal>1</literal> is returned, otherwise
1473 <literal>0</literal>.</para>
1477 <title>addStruct</title>
1481 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>addStruct</function></funcdef>
1483 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$assocArrayVal</parameter></paramdef>
1487 <para>The argument is an associative array. The elements of the
1488 array <emphasis>must be <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects
1489 themselves</emphasis>.</para>
1491 <para>Turns an empty <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> into a
1492 <classname>struct</classname> with contents as specified by
1493 <parameter>$assocArrayVal</parameter>.</para>
1495 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an xmlrpcval of type struct,
1496 the elements of <parameter>$arrayVal</parameter> are merged with the
1497 existing ones.</para>
1499 <para>See the fourth constructor form for more information.</para>
1501 <para>If all went OK, <literal>1</literal> is returned, otherwise
1502 <literal>0</literal>.</para>
1506 <title>kindOf</title>
1510 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>kindOf</function></funcdef>
1516 <para>Returns a string containing "struct", "array" or "scalar"
1517 describing the base type of the value. If it returns "undef" it
1518 means that the value hasn't been initialised.</para>
1522 <title>serialize</title>
1526 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>serialize</function></funcdef>
1532 <para>Returns a string containing the XML-RPC representation of this
1537 <title>scalarVal</title>
1541 <funcdef><type>mixed</type><function>scalarVal</function></funcdef>
1547 <para>If <function>$val->kindOf() == "scalar"</function>, this
1548 method returns the actual PHP-language value of the scalar (base 64
1549 decoding is automatically handled here).</para>
1553 <title>scalarTyp</title>
1557 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>scalarTyp</function></funcdef>
1563 <para>If <function>$val->kindOf() == "scalar"</function>, this
1564 method returns a string denoting the type of the scalar. As
1565 mentioned before, <literal>i4</literal> is always coerced to
1566 <literal>int</literal>.</para>
1570 <title>arrayMem</title>
1574 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>arrayMem</function></funcdef>
1576 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$n</parameter></paramdef>
1580 <para>If <function>$val->kindOf() == "array"</function>, returns
1581 the <parameter>$n</parameter>th element in the array represented by
1582 the value <parameter>$val</parameter>. The value returned is an
1583 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> object.</para>
1585 <para><programlisting language="php">
1586 // iterating over values of an array object
1587 for ($i = 0; $i < $val->arraySize(); $i++)
1589 $v = $val->arrayMem($i);
1590 echo "Element $i of the array is of type ".$v->kindOf();
1592 </programlisting></para>
1596 <title>arraySize</title>
1600 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>arraySize</function></funcdef>
1606 <para>If <parameter>$val</parameter> is an
1607 <classname>array</classname>, returns the number of elements in that
1612 <title>structMem</title>
1616 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>structMem</function></funcdef>
1618 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$memberName</parameter></paramdef>
1622 <para>If <function>$val->kindOf() == "struct"</function>, returns
1623 the element called <parameter>$memberName</parameter> from the
1624 struct represented by the value <parameter>$val</parameter>. The
1625 value returned is an <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> object.</para>
1629 <title>structEach</title>
1633 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>structEach</function></funcdef>
1639 <para>Returns the next (key, value) pair from the struct, when
1640 <parameter>$val</parameter> is a struct.
1641 <parameter>$value</parameter> is an xmlrpcval itself. See also <xref
1642 linkend="structreset" />.</para>
1644 <para><programlisting language="php">
1645 // iterating over all values of a struct object
1646 $val->structreset();
1647 while (list($key, $v) = $val->structEach())
1649 echo "Element $key of the struct is of type ".$v->kindOf();
1651 </programlisting></para>
1654 <sect3 id="structreset" xreflabel="structreset()">
1655 <title>structReset</title>
1659 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>structReset</function></funcdef>
1665 <para>Resets the internal pointer for
1666 <function>structEach()</function> to the beginning of the struct,
1667 where <parameter>$val</parameter> is a struct.</para>
1670 <sect3 id="structmemexists" xreflabel="structmemexists()">
1671 <title>structMemExists</title>
1675 <funcdef><type>bool</type><function>structMemExsists</function></funcdef>
1677 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$memberName</parameter></paramdef>
1681 <para>Returns <constant>TRUE</constant> or
1682 <constant>FALSE</constant> depending on whether a member of the
1683 given name exists in the struct.</para>
1688 <sect1 id="xmlrpcmsg" xreflabel="xmlrpcmsg">
1689 <title>xmlrpcmsg</title>
1691 <para>This class provides a representation for a request to an XML-RPC
1692 server. A client sends an <classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname> to a server,
1693 and receives back an <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> (see <xref
1694 linkend="xmlrpc-client-send" />).</para>
1697 <title>Creation</title>
1699 <para>The constructor takes the following forms:</para>
1703 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcmsg</type>new
1704 <function>xmlrpcmsg</function></funcdef>
1706 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$methodName</parameter></paramdef>
1708 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$parameterArray</parameter><initializer>null</initializer></paramdef>
1712 <para>Where <parameter>methodName</parameter> is a string indicating
1713 the name of the method you wish to invoke, and
1714 <parameter>parameterArray</parameter> is a simple php
1715 <classname>Array</classname> of <classname>xmlrpcval</classname>
1716 objects. Here's an example message to the <emphasis>US state
1717 name</emphasis> server:</para>
1719 <programlisting language="php">
1720 $msg = new xmlrpcmsg("examples.getStateName", array(new xmlrpcval(23, "int")));
1723 <para>This example requests the name of state number 23. For more
1724 information on <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects, see <xref
1725 linkend="xmlrpcval" />.</para>
1727 <para>Note that the <parameter>parameterArray</parameter> parameter is
1728 optional and can be omitted for methods that take no input parameters
1729 or if you plan to add parameters one by one.</para>
1733 <title>Methods</title>
1736 <title>addParam</title>
1740 <funcdef><type>bool</type><function>addParam</function></funcdef>
1742 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><parameter>$xmlrpcVal</parameter></paramdef>
1746 <para>Adds the <classname>xmlrpcval</classname>
1747 <parameter>xmlrpcVal</parameter> to the parameter list for this
1748 method call. Returns TRUE or FALSE on error.</para>
1752 <title>getNumParams</title>
1756 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>getNumParams</function></funcdef>
1762 <para>Returns the number of parameters attached to this
1767 <title>getParam</title>
1771 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>getParam</function></funcdef>
1773 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$n</parameter></paramdef>
1777 <para>Gets the <parameter>n</parameter>th parameter in the message
1778 (with the index zero-based). Use this method in server
1779 implementations to retrieve the values sent by the client.</para>
1783 <title>method</title>
1787 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>method</function></funcdef>
1793 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>method</function></funcdef>
1795 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$methName</parameter></paramdef>
1799 <para>Gets or sets the method contained in the XML-RPC
1804 <title>parseResponse</title>
1808 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type><function>parseResponse</function></funcdef>
1810 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$xmlString</parameter></paramdef>
1814 <para>Given an incoming XML-RPC server response contained in the
1815 string <parameter>$xmlString</parameter>, this method constructs an
1816 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> response object and returns it,
1817 setting error codes as appropriate (see <xref
1818 linkend="xmlrpc-client-send" />).</para>
1820 <para>This method processes any HTTP/MIME headers it finds.</para>
1824 <title>parseResponseFile</title>
1828 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type><function>parseResponseFile</function></funcdef>
1830 <paramdef><type>file handle
1831 resource</type><parameter>$fileHandle</parameter></paramdef>
1835 <para>Given an incoming XML-RPC server response on the open file
1836 handle <parameter>fileHandle</parameter>, this method reads all the
1837 data it finds and passes it to
1838 <function>parseResponse.</function></para>
1840 <para>This method is useful to construct responses from pre-prepared
1841 files (see files <literal>demo1.txt, demo2.txt, demo3.txt</literal>
1842 in this distribution). It processes any HTTP headers it finds, and
1843 does not close the file handle.</para>
1847 <title>serialize</title>
1851 <funcdef><type>string
1852 </type><function>serialize</function></funcdef>
1858 <para>Returns the an XML string representing the XML-RPC
1864 <sect1 id="xmlrpc-client" xreflabel="xmlrpc_client">
1865 <title>xmlrpc_client</title>
1867 <para>This is the basic class used to represent a client of an XML-RPC
1871 <title>Creation</title>
1873 <para>The constructor accepts one of two possible syntaxes:</para>
1877 <funcdef><type>xmlrpc_client</type>new
1878 <function>xmlrpc_client</function></funcdef>
1880 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$server_url</parameter></paramdef>
1884 <funcdef><type>xmlrpc_client</type>new
1885 <function>xmlrpc_client</function></funcdef>
1887 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$server_path</parameter></paramdef>
1889 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$server_hostname</parameter></paramdef>
1891 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$server_port</parameter><initializer>80</initializer></paramdef>
1893 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter><initializer>'http'</initializer></paramdef>
1897 <para>Here are a couple of usage examples of the first form:</para>
1899 <programlisting language="php">
1900 $client = new xmlrpc_client("http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/server.php");
1901 $another_client = new xmlrpc_client("https://james:bond@secret.service.com:443/xmlrpcserver?agent=007");
1904 <para>The second syntax does not allow to express a username and
1905 password to be used for basic HTTP authorization as in the second
1906 example above, but instead it allows to choose whether xmlrpc calls
1907 will be made using the HTTP 1.0 or 1.1 protocol.</para>
1909 <para>Here's another example client set up to query Userland's XML-RPC
1910 server at <emphasis>betty.userland.com</emphasis>:</para>
1912 <programlisting language="php">
1913 $client = new xmlrpc_client("/RPC2", "betty.userland.com", 80);
1916 <para>The <parameter>server_port</parameter> parameter is optional,
1917 and if omitted will default to 80 when using HTTP and 443 when using
1918 HTTPS (see the <xref linkend="xmlrpc-client-send" /> method
1921 <para>The <parameter>transport</parameter> parameter is optional, and
1922 if omitted will default to 'http'. Allowed values are either
1923 '<symbol>http'</symbol>, '<symbol>https</symbol>' or
1924 '<symbol>http11'</symbol>. Its value can be overridden with every call
1925 to the <methodname>send</methodname> method. See the
1926 <methodname>send</methodname> method below for more details about the
1927 meaning of the different values.</para>
1931 <title>Methods</title>
1933 <para>This class supports the following methods.</para>
1935 <sect3 id="xmlrpc-client-send" xreflabel="xmlrpc_client->send">
1938 <para>This method takes the forms:</para>
1942 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type><function>send</function></funcdef>
1944 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcmsg</type><parameter>$xmlrpc_message</parameter></paramdef>
1946 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$timeout</parameter></paramdef>
1948 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter></paramdef>
1952 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>send</function></funcdef>
1954 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$xmlrpc_messages</parameter></paramdef>
1956 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$timeout</parameter></paramdef>
1958 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter></paramdef>
1962 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type><function>send</function></funcdef>
1964 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$xml_payload</parameter></paramdef>
1966 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$timeout</parameter></paramdef>
1968 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter></paramdef>
1972 <para>Where <parameter>xmlrpc_message</parameter> is an instance of
1973 <classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname> (see <xref linkend="xmlrpcmsg" />),
1974 and <parameter>response</parameter> is an instance of
1975 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> (see <xref
1976 linkend="xmlrpcresp" />).</para>
1978 <para><parameter>If xmlrpc_messages</parameter> is an array of
1979 message instances, <code>responses</code> will be an array of
1980 response instances. The client will try to make use of a single
1981 <code>system.multicall</code> xml-rpc method call to forward to the
1982 server all the messages in a single HTTP round trip, unless
1983 <code>$client->no_multicall</code> has been previously set to
1984 <code>TRUE</code> (see the multicall method below), in which case
1985 many consecutive xmlrpc requests will be sent.</para>
1987 <para>The third syntax allows to build by hand (or any other means)
1988 a complete xmlrpc request message, and send it to the server.
1989 <parameter>xml_payload</parameter> should be a string containing the
1990 complete xml representation of the request. It is e.g. useful when,
1991 for maximal speed of execution, the request is serialized into a
1992 string using the native php xmlrpc functions (see <ulink
1993 url="http://www.php.net/xmlrpc">the php manual on
1994 xmlrpc</ulink>).</para>
1996 <para>The <parameter>timeout</parameter> is optional, and will be
1997 set to <literal>0</literal> (wait for platform-specific predefined
1998 timeout) if omitted. This timeout value is passed to
1999 <function>fsockopen()</function>. It is also used for detecting
2000 server timeouts during communication (i.e. if the server does not
2001 send anything to the client for <parameter>timeout</parameter>
2002 seconds, the connection will be closed).</para>
2004 <para>The <parameter>transport</parameter> parameter is optional,
2005 and if omitted will default to the transport set using instance
2006 creator or 'http' if omitted. The only other valid values are
2007 'https', which will use an SSL HTTP connection to connect to the
2008 remote server, and 'http11'. Note that your PHP must have the "curl"
2009 extension compiled in order to use both these features. Note that
2010 when using SSL you should normally set your port number to 443,
2011 unless the SSL server you are contacting runs at any other
2015 <para>PHP 4.0.6 has a bug which prevents SSL working.</para>
2018 <para>In addition to low-level errors, the XML-RPC server you were
2019 querying may return an error in the
2020 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> object. See <xref
2021 linkend="xmlrpcresp" /> for details of how to handle these
2025 <sect3 id="multicall" xreflabel="xmlrpc_client->multicall">
2026 <title>multiCall</title>
2028 <para>This method takes the form:</para>
2032 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>multiCall</function></funcdef>
2034 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$messages</parameter></paramdef>
2036 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$timeout</parameter></paramdef>
2038 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$transport</parameter></paramdef>
2040 <paramdef><type>bool</type><parameter>$fallback</parameter></paramdef>
2044 <para>This method is used to boxcar many method calls in a single
2045 xml-rpc request. It will try first to make use of the
2046 <code>system.multicall</code> xml-rpc method call, and fall back to
2047 executing many separate requests if the server returns any
2050 <para><parameter>msgs</parameter> is an array of
2051 <classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname> objects (see <xref
2052 linkend="xmlrpcmsg" />), and <parameter>response</parameter> is an
2053 array of <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> objects (see <xref
2054 linkend="xmlrpcresp" />).</para>
2056 <para>The <parameter>timeout</parameter> and
2057 <parameter>transport</parameter> parameters are optional, and behave
2058 as in the <methodname>send</methodname> method above.</para>
2060 <para>The <parameter>fallback</parameter> parameter is optional, and
2061 defaults to <constant>TRUE</constant>. When set to
2062 <constant>FALSE</constant> it will prevent the client to try using
2063 many single method calls in case of failure of the first multicall
2064 request. It should be set only when the server is known to support
2065 the multicall extension.</para>
2069 <title>setAcceptedCompression</title>
2073 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setAcceptedCompression</function></funcdef>
2075 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$compressionmethod</parameter></paramdef>
2079 <para>This method defines whether the client will accept compressed
2080 xml payload forming the bodies of the xmlrpc responses received from
2081 servers. Note that enabling reception of compressed responses merely
2082 adds some standard http headers to xmlrpc requests. It is up to the
2083 xmlrpc server to return compressed responses when receiving such
2084 requests. Allowed values for
2085 <parameter>compressionmethod</parameter> are: 'gzip', 'deflate',
2086 'any' or null (with any meaning either gzip or deflate).</para>
2088 <para>This requires the "zlib" extension to be enabled in your php
2089 install. If it is, by default <classname>xmlrpc_client</classname>
2090 instances will enable reception of compressed content.</para>
2094 <title>setCaCertificate</title>
2098 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCaCertificate</function></funcdef>
2100 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$certificate</parameter></paramdef>
2102 <paramdef><type>bool</type><parameter>$is_dir</parameter></paramdef>
2106 <para>This method sets an optional certificate to be used in
2107 SSL-enabled communication to validate a remote server with (when the
2108 <parameter>server_method</parameter> is set to 'https' in the
2109 client's construction or in the send method and
2110 <methodname>SetSSLVerifypeer</methodname> has been set to
2111 <constant>TRUE</constant>).</para>
2113 <para>The <parameter>certificate</parameter> parameter must be the
2114 filename of a PEM formatted certificate, or a directory containing
2115 multiple certificate files. The <parameter>is_dir</parameter>
2116 parameter defaults to <constant>FALSE</constant>, set it to
2117 <constant>TRUE</constant> to specify that
2118 <parameter>certificate</parameter> indicates a directory instead of
2119 a single file.</para>
2121 <para>This requires the "curl" extension to be compiled into your
2122 installation of PHP. For more details see the man page for the
2123 <function>curl_setopt</function> function.</para>
2127 <title>setCertificate</title>
2131 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCertificate</function></funcdef>
2133 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$certificate</parameter></paramdef>
2135 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$passphrase</parameter></paramdef>
2139 <para>This method sets the optional certificate and passphrase used
2140 in SSL-enabled communication with a remote server (when the
2141 <parameter>server_method</parameter> is set to 'https' in the
2142 client's construction or in the send method).</para>
2144 <para>The <parameter>certificate</parameter> parameter must be the
2145 filename of a PEM formatted certificate. The
2146 <parameter>passphrase</parameter> parameter must contain the
2147 password required to use the certificate.</para>
2149 <para>This requires the "curl" extension to be compiled into your
2150 installation of PHP. For more details see the man page for the
2151 <function>curl_setopt</function> function.</para>
2153 <para>Note: to retrieve information about the client certificate on
2154 the server side, you will need to look into the environment
2155 variables which are set up by the webserver. Different webservers
2156 will typically set up different variables.</para>
2160 <title>setCookie</title>
2164 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCookie</function></funcdef>
2166 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$name</parameter></paramdef>
2168 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$value</parameter></paramdef>
2170 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$path</parameter></paramdef>
2172 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$domain</parameter></paramdef>
2174 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$port</parameter></paramdef>
2178 <para>This method sets a cookie that will be sent to the xmlrpc
2179 server along with every further request (useful e.g. for keeping
2180 session info outside of the xml-rpc payload).</para>
2182 <para><parameter>$value</parameter> is optional, and defaults to
2185 <para><parameter>$path, $domain and $port</parameter> are optional,
2186 and will be omitted from the cookie header if unspecified. Note that
2187 setting any of these values will turn the cookie into a 'version 1'
2188 cookie, that might not be fully supported by the server (see RFC2965
2189 for more details).</para>
2193 <title>setCredentials</title>
2197 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCredentials</function></funcdef>
2199 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$username</parameter></paramdef>
2201 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$password</parameter></paramdef>
2203 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$authtype</parameter></paramdef>
2207 <para>This method sets the username and password for authorizing the
2208 client to a server. With the default (HTTP) transport, this
2209 information is used for HTTP Basic authorization. Note that username
2210 and password can also be set using the class constructor. With HTTP
2211 1.1 and HTTPS transport, NTLM and Digest authentication protocols
2212 are also supported. To enable them use the constants
2213 <constant>CURLAUTH_DIGEST</constant> and
2214 <constant>CURLAUTH_NTLM</constant> as values for the authtype
2219 <title>setCurlOptions</title>
2221 <para><funcsynopsis>
2223 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setCurlOptions</function></funcdef>
2225 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
2227 </funcsynopsis>This method allows to directly set any desired
2228 option to manipulate the usage of the cURL client (when in cURL
2229 mode). It can be used eg. to explicitly bind to an outgoing ip
2230 address when the server is multihomed</para>
2234 <title>setDebug</title>
2238 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setDebug</function></funcdef>
2240 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$debugLvl</parameter></paramdef>
2244 <para><parameter>debugLvl</parameter> is either <literal>0,
2245 1</literal> or 2 depending on whether you require the client to
2246 print debugging information to the browser. The default is not to
2247 output this information (0).</para>
2249 <para>The debugging information at level 1includes the raw data
2250 returned from the XML-RPC server it was querying (including bot HTTP
2251 headers and the full XML payload), and the PHP value the client
2252 attempts to create to represent the value returned by the server. At
2253 level2, the complete payload of the xmlrpc request is also printed,
2254 before being sent t the server.</para>
2256 <para>This option can be very useful when debugging servers as it
2257 allows you to see exactly what the client sends and the server
2262 <title>setKey</title>
2266 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setKey</function></funcdef>
2268 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$key</parameter></paramdef>
2270 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$keypass</parameter></paramdef>
2274 <para>This method sets the optional certificate key and passphrase
2275 used in SSL-enabled communication with a remote server (when the
2276 <parameter>transport</parameter> is set to 'https' in the client's
2277 construction or in the send method).</para>
2279 <para>This requires the "curl" extension to be compiled into your
2280 installation of PHP. For more details see the man page for the
2281 <function>curl_setopt</function> function.</para>
2285 <title>setProxy</title>
2289 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setProxy</function></funcdef>
2291 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$proxyhost</parameter></paramdef>
2293 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$proxyport</parameter></paramdef>
2295 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$proxyusername</parameter></paramdef>
2297 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$proxypassword</parameter></paramdef>
2299 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$authtype</parameter></paramdef>
2303 <para>This method enables calling servers via an HTTP proxy. The
2304 <parameter>proxyusername</parameter>,<parameter>
2305 proxypassword</parameter> and <parameter>authtype</parameter>
2306 parameters are optional. <parameter>Authtype</parameter> defaults to
2307 <constant>CURLAUTH_BASIC</constant> (Basic authentication protocol);
2308 the only other valid value is the constant
2309 <constant>CURLAUTH_NTLM</constant>, and has effect only when the
2310 client uses the HTTP 1.1 protocol.</para>
2312 <para>NB: CURL versions before 7.11.10 cannot use a proxy to
2313 communicate with https servers.</para>
2317 <title>setRequestCompression</title>
2321 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setRequestCompression</function></funcdef>
2323 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$compressionmethod</parameter></paramdef>
2327 <para>This method defines whether the xml payload forming the
2328 request body will be sent to the server in compressed format, as per
2329 the HTTP specification. This is particularly useful for large
2330 request parameters and over slow network connections. Allowed values
2331 for <parameter>compressionmethod</parameter> are: 'gzip', 'deflate',
2332 'any' or null (with any meaning either gzip or deflate). Note that
2333 there is no automatic fallback mechanism in place for errors due to
2334 servers not supporting receiving compressed request bodies, so make
2335 sure that the particular server you are querying does accept
2336 compressed requests before turning it on.</para>
2338 <para>This requires the "zlib" extension to be enabled in your php
2343 <title>setSSLVerifyHost</title>
2347 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setSSLVerifyHost</function></funcdef>
2349 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$i</parameter></paramdef>
2353 <para>This method defines whether connections made to XML-RPC
2354 backends via HTTPS should verify the remote host's SSL certificate's
2355 common name (CN). By default, only the existence of a CN is checked.
2356 <parameter><parameter>$i</parameter></parameter> should be an
2357 integer value; 0 to not check the CN at all, 1 to merely check for
2358 its existence, and 2 to check that the CN on the certificate matches
2359 the hostname that is being connected to.</para>
2363 <title>setSSLVerifyPeer</title>
2367 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setSSLVerifyPeer</function></funcdef>
2369 <paramdef><type>bool</type><parameter>$i</parameter></paramdef>
2373 <para>This method defines whether connections made to XML-RPC
2374 backends via HTTPS should verify the remote host's SSL certificate,
2375 and cause the connection to fail if the cert verification fails.
2376 <parameter><parameter>$i</parameter></parameter> should be a boolean
2377 value. Default value: <constant>TRUE</constant>. To specify custom
2378 SSL certificates to validate the server with, use the
2379 <methodname>setCaCertificate</methodname> method.</para>
2383 <title>setSSLVersion</title>
2387 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>setSSLVersion</function></funcdef>
2389 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$i</parameter></paramdef>
2393 <para>This method sets the SSL version to be used when making https calls.
2394 See the PHP manual for CURLOPT_SSLVERSION for a description of the allowed values.</para>
2398 <title>setUserAgent</title>
2400 <para><funcsynopsis>
2402 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>Useragent</function></funcdef>
2404 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$useragent</parameter></paramdef>
2406 </funcsynopsis>This method sets a custom user-agent that will be
2407 used by the client in the http headers sent with the request. The
2408 default value is built using the library name and version
2414 <title>Variables</title>
2416 <para>NB: direct manipulation of these variables is only recommended
2417 for advanced users.</para>
2420 <title>no_multicall</title>
2422 <para>This member variable determines whether the multicall() method
2423 will try to take advantage of the system.multicall xmlrpc method to
2424 dispatch to the server an array of requests in a single http
2425 roundtrip or simply execute many consecutive http calls. Defaults to
2426 FALSE, but it will be enabled automatically on the first failure of
2427 execution of system.multicall.</para>
2431 <title>request_charset_encoding</title>
2433 <para>This is the charset encoding that will be used for serializing
2434 request sent by the client.</para>
2436 <para>If defaults to NULL, which means using US-ASCII and encoding
2437 all characters outside of the ASCII range using their xml character
2438 entity representation (this has the benefit that line end characters
2439 will not be mangled in the transfer, a CR-LF will be preserved as
2440 well as a singe LF).</para>
2442 <para>Valid values are 'US-ASCII', 'UTF-8' and 'ISO-8859-1'</para>
2445 <sect3 id="return-type" xreflabel="return_type">
2446 <title>return_type</title>
2448 <para>This member variable determines whether the value returned
2449 inside an xmlrpcresp object as results of calls to the send() and
2450 multicall() methods will be an xmlrpcval object, a plain php value
2451 or a raw xml string. Allowed values are 'xmlrpcvals' (the default),
2452 'phpvals' and 'xml'. To allow the user to differentiate between a
2453 correct and a faulty response, fault responses will be returned as
2454 xmlrpcresp objects in any case. Note that the 'phpvals' setting will
2455 yield faster execution times, but some of the information from the
2456 original response will be lost. It will be e.g. impossible to tell
2457 whether a particular php string value was sent by the server as an
2458 xmlrpc string or base64 value.</para>
2460 <para>Example usage:</para>
2462 <programlisting language="php">
2463 $client = new xmlrpc_client("phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/server.php");
2464 $client->return_type = 'phpvals';
2465 $message = new xmlrpcmsg("examples.getStateName", array(new xmlrpcval(23, "int")));
2466 $resp = $client->send($message);
2467 if ($resp->faultCode()) echo 'KO. Error: '.$resp->faultString(); else echo 'OK: got '.$resp->value();
2470 <para>For more details about usage of the 'xml' value, see Appendix
2476 <sect1 id="xmlrpcresp" xreflabel="xmlrpcresp">
2477 <title>xmlrpcresp</title>
2479 <para>This class is used to contain responses to XML-RPC requests. A
2480 server method handler will construct an
2481 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> and pass it as a return value. This
2482 same value will be returned by the result of an invocation of the
2483 <function>send</function> method of the
2484 <classname>xmlrpc_client</classname> class.</para>
2487 <title>Creation</title>
2491 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type>new
2492 <function>xmlrpcresp</function></funcdef>
2494 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><parameter>$xmlrpcval</parameter></paramdef>
2498 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcresp</type>new
2499 <function>xmlrpcresp</function></funcdef>
2501 <paramdef><parameter>0</parameter></paramdef>
2503 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$errcode</parameter></paramdef>
2505 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$err_string</parameter></paramdef>
2509 <para>The first syntax is used when execution has happened without
2510 difficulty: <parameter>$xmlrpcval</parameter> is an
2511 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> value with the result of the method
2512 execution contained in it. Alternatively it can be a string containing
2513 the xml serialization of the single xml-rpc value result of method
2516 <para>The second type of constructor is used in case of failure.
2517 <parameter>errcode</parameter> and <parameter>err_string</parameter>
2518 are used to provide indication of what has gone wrong. See <xref
2519 linkend="xmlrpc-server" /> for more information on passing error
2524 <title>Methods</title>
2527 <title>faultCode</title>
2531 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>faultCode</function></funcdef>
2537 <para>Returns the integer fault code return from the XML-RPC
2538 response. A zero value indicates success, any other value indicates
2539 a failure response.</para>
2543 <title>faultString</title>
2547 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>faultString</function></funcdef>
2553 <para>Returns the human readable explanation of the fault indicated
2554 by <function>$resp->faultCode</function>().</para>
2558 <title>value</title>
2562 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>value</function></funcdef>
2568 <para>Returns an <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> object containing
2569 the return value sent by the server. If the response's
2570 <function>faultCode</function> is non-zero then the value returned
2571 by this method should not be used (it may not even be an
2574 <para>Note: if the xmlrpcresp instance in question has been created
2575 by an <classname>xmlrpc_client</classname> object whose
2576 <varname>return_type</varname> was set to 'phpvals', then a plain
2577 php value will be returned instead of an
2578 <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> object. If the
2579 <varname>return_type</varname> was set to 'xml', an xml string will
2580 be returned (see the return_type member var above for more
2585 <title>serialize</title>
2589 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>serialize</function></funcdef>
2595 <para>Returns an XML string representation of the response (xml
2596 prologue not included).</para>
2601 <sect1 id="xmlrpc-server" xreflabel="xmlrpc_server">
2602 <title>xmlrpc_server</title>
2604 <para>The implementation of this class has been kept as simple to use as
2605 possible. The constructor for the server basically does all the work.
2606 Here's a minimal example:</para>
2608 <programlisting language="php">
2609 function foo ($xmlrpcmsg) {
2611 return new xmlrpcresp($some_xmlrpc_val);
2615 function foobar($xmlrpcmsg) {
2617 return new xmlrpcresp($some_xmlrpc_val);
2621 $s = new xmlrpc_server(
2623 "examples.myFunc1" => array("function" => "foo"),
2624 "examples.myFunc2" => array("function" => "bar::foobar"),
2628 <para>This performs everything you need to do with a server. The single
2629 constructor argument is an associative array from xmlrpc method names to
2630 php function names. The incoming request is parsed and dispatched to the
2631 relevant php function, which is responsible for returning a
2632 <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname> object, that will be serialized back
2633 to the caller.</para>
2636 <title>Method handler functions</title>
2638 <para>Both php functions and class methods can be registered as xmlrpc
2639 method handlers.</para>
2641 <para>The synopsis of a method handler function is:</para>
2643 <para><synopsis>xmlrpcresp $resp = function (xmlrpcmsg $msg)</synopsis></para>
2645 <para>No text should be echoed 'to screen' by the handler function, or
2646 it will break the xml response sent back to the client. This applies
2647 also to error and warning messages that PHP prints to screen unless
2648 the appropriate parameters have been set in the php.in file. Another
2649 way to prevent echoing of errors inside the response and facilitate
2650 debugging is to use the server SetDebug method with debug level 3 (see
2651 ...). Exceptions thrown duting execution of handler functions are
2652 caught by default and a XML-RPC error reponse is generated instead.
2653 This behaviour can be finetuned by usage of the
2654 <varname>exception_handling</varname> member variable (see
2657 <para>Note that if you implement a method with a name prefixed by
2658 <code>system.</code> the handler function will be invoked by the
2659 server with two parameters, the first being the server itself and the
2660 second being the <classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname> object.</para>
2662 <para>The same php function can be registered as handler of multiple
2663 xmlrpc methods.</para>
2665 <para>Here is a more detailed example of what the handler function
2666 <function>foo</function> may do:</para>
2668 <programlisting language="php">
2669 function foo ($xmlrpcmsg) {
2670 global $xmlrpcerruser; // import user errcode base value
2672 $meth = $xmlrpcmsg->method(); // retrieve method name
2673 $par = $xmlrpcmsg->getParam(0); // retrieve value of first parameter - assumes at least one param received
2674 $val = $par->scalarval(); // decode value of first parameter - assumes it is a scalar value
2679 // this is an error condition
2680 return new xmlrpcresp(0, $xmlrpcerruser+1, // user error 1
2681 "There's a problem, Captain");
2683 // this is a successful value being returned
2684 return new xmlrpcresp(new xmlrpcval("All's fine!", "string"));
2689 <para>See <filename>server.php</filename> in this distribution for
2690 more examples of how to do this.</para>
2692 <para>Since release 2.0RC3 there is a new, even simpler way of
2693 registering php functions with the server. See section 5.7
2698 <title>The dispatch map</title>
2700 <para>The first argument to the <function>xmlrpc_server</function>
2701 constructor is an array, called the <emphasis>dispatch map</emphasis>.
2702 In this array is the information the server needs to service the
2703 XML-RPC methods you define.</para>
2705 <para>The dispatch map takes the form of an associative array of
2706 associative arrays: the outer array has one entry for each method, the
2707 key being the method name. The corresponding value is another
2708 associative array, which can have the following members:</para>
2712 <para><function><literal>function</literal></function> - this
2713 entry is mandatory. It must be either a name of a function in the
2714 global scope which services the XML-RPC method, or an array
2715 containing an instance of an object and a static method name (for
2716 static class methods the 'class::method' syntax is also
2721 <para><function><literal>signature</literal></function> - this
2722 entry is an array containing the possible signatures (see <xref
2723 linkend="signatures" />) for the method. If this entry is present
2724 then the server will check that the correct number and type of
2725 parameters have been sent for this method before dispatching
2730 <para><function><literal>docstring</literal></function> - this
2731 entry is a string containing documentation for the method. The
2732 documentation may contain HTML markup.</para>
2736 <para><literal>signature_docs</literal> - this entry can be used
2737 to provide documentation for the single parameters. It must match
2738 in structure the 'signature' member. By default, only the
2739 <classname>documenting_xmlrpc_server</classname> class in the
2740 extras package will take advantage of this, since the
2741 "system.methodHelp" protocol does not support documenting method
2742 parameters individually.</para>
2746 <para><literal>parameters_type</literal> - this entry can be used
2747 when the server is working in 'xmlrpcvals' mode (see ...) to
2748 define one or more entries in the dispatch map as being functions
2749 that follow the 'phpvals' calling convention. The only useful
2750 value is currently the string <literal>phpvals</literal>.</para>
2754 <para>Look at the <filename>server.php</filename> example in the
2755 distribution to see what a dispatch map looks like.</para>
2758 <sect2 id="signatures" xreflabel="Signatures">
2759 <title>Method signatures</title>
2761 <para>A signature is a description of a method's return type and its
2762 parameter types. A method may have more than one signature.</para>
2764 <para>Within a server's dispatch map, each method has an array of
2765 possible signatures. Each signature is an array of types. The first
2766 entry is the return type. For instance, the method <programlisting
2767 language="php">string examples.getStateName(int)
2768 </programlisting> has the signature <programlisting language="php">array($xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcInt)
2769 </programlisting> and, assuming that it is the only possible signature for the
2770 method, it might be used like this in server creation: <programlisting
2772 $findstate_sig = array(array($xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcInt));
2774 $findstate_doc = 'When passed an integer between 1 and 51 returns the
2775 name of a US state, where the integer is the index of that state name
2776 in an alphabetic order.';
2778 $s = new xmlrpc_server( array(
2779 "examples.getStateName" => array(
2780 "function" => "findstate",
2781 "signature" => $findstate_sig,
2782 "docstring" => $findstate_doc
2784 </programlisting></para>
2786 <para>Note that method signatures do not allow to check nested
2787 parameters, e.g. the number, names and types of the members of a
2788 struct param cannot be validated.</para>
2790 <para>If a method that you want to expose has a definite number of
2791 parameters, but each of those parameters could reasonably be of
2792 multiple types, the array of acceptable signatures will easily grow
2793 into a combinatorial explosion. To avoid such a situation, the lib
2794 defines the global var <varname>$xmlrpcValue</varname>, which can be
2795 used in method signatures as a placeholder for 'any xmlrpc
2798 <para><programlisting language="php">
2799 $echoback_sig = array(array($xmlrpcValue, $xmlrpcValue));
2801 $findstate_doc = 'Echoes back to the client the received value, regardless of its type';
2803 $s = new xmlrpc_server( array(
2804 "echoBack" => array(
2805 "function" => "echoback",
2806 "signature" => $echoback_sig, // this sig guarantees that the method handler will be called with one and only one parameter
2807 "docstring" => $echoback_doc
2809 </programlisting></para>
2811 <para>Methods <methodname>system.listMethods</methodname>,
2812 <methodname>system.methodHelp</methodname>,
2813 <methodname>system.methodSignature</methodname> and
2814 <methodname>system.multicall</methodname> are already defined by the
2815 server, and should not be reimplemented (see Reserved Methods
2820 <title>Delaying the server response</title>
2822 <para>You may want to construct the server, but for some reason not
2823 fulfill the request immediately (security verification, for instance).
2824 If you omit to pass to the constructor the dispatch map or pass it a
2825 second argument of <literal>0</literal> this will have the desired
2826 effect. You can then use the <function>service()</function> method of
2827 the server class to service the request. For example:</para>
2829 <programlisting language="php">
2830 $s = new xmlrpc_server($myDispMap, 0); // second parameter = 0 prevents automatic servicing of request
2832 // ... some code that does other stuff here
2837 <para>Note that the <methodname>service</methodname> method will print
2838 the complete result payload to screen and send appropriate HTTP
2839 headers back to the client, but also return the response object. This
2840 permits further manipulation of the response, possibly in combination
2841 with output buffering.</para>
2843 <para>To prevent the server from sending HTTP headers back to the
2844 client, you can pass a second parameter with a value of
2845 <literal>TRUE</literal> to the <methodname>service</methodname>
2846 method. In this case, the response payload will be returned instead of
2847 the response object.</para>
2849 <para>Xmlrpc requests retrieved by other means than HTTP POST bodies
2850 can also be processed. For example:</para>
2852 <programlisting language="php">
2853 $s = new xmlrpc_server(); // not passing a dispatch map prevents automatic servicing of request
2855 // ... some code that does other stuff here, including setting dispatch map into server object
2857 $resp = $s->service($xmlrpc_request_body, true); // parse a variable instead of POST body, retrieve response payload
2859 // ... some code that does other stuff with xml response $resp here
2864 <title>Modifying the server behaviour</title>
2866 <para>A couple of methods / class variables are available to modify
2867 the behaviour of the server. The only way to take advantage of their
2868 existence is by usage of a delayed server response (see above)</para>
2871 <title>setDebug()</title>
2873 <para>This function controls weather the server is going to echo
2874 debugging messages back to the client as comments in response body.
2875 Valid values: 0,1,2,3, with 1 being the default. At level 0, no
2876 debug info is returned to the client. At level 2, the complete
2877 client request is added to the response, as part of the xml
2878 comments. At level 3, a new PHP error handler is set when executing
2879 user functions exposed as server methods, and all non-fatal errors
2880 are trapped and added as comments into the response.</para>
2884 <title>allow_system_funcs</title>
2886 <para>Default_value: TRUE. When set to FALSE, disables support for
2887 <methodname>System.xxx</methodname> functions in the server. It
2888 might be useful e.g. if you do not wish the server to respond to
2889 requests to <methodname>System.ListMethods</methodname>.</para>
2893 <title>compress_response</title>
2895 <para>When set to TRUE, enables the server to take advantage of HTTP
2896 compression, otherwise disables it. Responses will be transparently
2897 compressed, but only when an xmlrpc-client declares its support for
2898 compression in the HTTP headers of the request.</para>
2900 <para>Note that the ZLIB php extension must be installed for this to
2901 work. If it is, <varname>compress_response</varname> will default to
2906 <title>exception_handling</title>
2908 <para>This variable controls the behaviour of the server when an
2909 exception is thrown by a method handler php function. Valid values:
2910 0,1,2, with 0 being the default. At level 0, the server catches the
2911 exception and return an 'internal error' xmlrpc response; at 1 it
2912 catches the exceptions and return an xmlrpc response with the error
2913 code and error message corresponding to the exception that was
2914 thron; at 2 = the exception is floated to the upper layers in the
2919 <title>response_charset_encoding</title>
2921 <para>Charset encoding to be used for response (only affects string
2924 <para>If it can, the server will convert the generated response from
2925 internal_encoding to the intended one.</para>
2927 <para>Valid values are: a supported xml encoding (only UTF-8 and
2928 ISO-8859-1 at present, unless mbstring is enabled), null (leave
2929 charset unspecified in response and convert output stream to
2930 US_ASCII), 'default' (use xmlrpc library default as specified in
2931 xmlrpc.inc, convert output stream if needed), or 'auto' (use
2932 client-specified charset encoding or same as request if request
2933 headers do not specify it (unless request is US-ASCII: then use
2934 library default anyway).</para>
2939 <title>Fault reporting</title>
2941 <para>Fault codes for your servers should start at the value indicated
2942 by the global <literal>$xmlrpcerruser</literal> + 1.</para>
2944 <para>Standard errors returned by the server include:</para>
2948 <term><literal>1</literal> <phrase>Unknown method</phrase></term>
2951 <para>Returned if the server was asked to dispatch a method it
2952 didn't know about</para>
2957 <term><literal>2</literal> <phrase>Invalid return
2958 payload</phrase></term>
2961 <para>This error is actually generated by the client, not
2962 server, code, but signifies that a server returned something it
2963 couldn't understand. A more detailed error report is sometimes
2964 added onto the end of the phrase above.</para>
2969 <term><literal>3</literal> <phrase>Incorrect
2970 parameters</phrase></term>
2973 <para>This error is generated when the server has signature(s)
2974 defined for a method, and the parameters passed by the client do
2975 not match any of signatures.</para>
2980 <term><literal>4</literal> <phrase>Can't introspect: method
2981 unknown</phrase></term>
2984 <para>This error is generated by the builtin
2985 <function>system.*</function> methods when any kind of
2986 introspection is attempted on a method undefined by the
2992 <term><literal>5</literal> <phrase>Didn't receive 200 OK from
2993 remote server</phrase></term>
2996 <para>This error is generated by the client when a remote server
2997 doesn't return HTTP/1.1 200 OK in response to a request. A more
2998 detailed error report is added onto the end of the phrase
3004 <term><literal>6</literal> <phrase>No data received from
3005 server</phrase></term>
3008 <para>This error is generated by the client when a remote server
3009 returns HTTP/1.1 200 OK in response to a request, but no
3010 response body follows the HTTP headers.</para>
3015 <term><literal>7</literal> <phrase>No SSL support compiled
3019 <para>This error is generated by the client when trying to send
3020 a request with HTTPS and the CURL extension is not available to
3026 <term><literal>8</literal> <phrase>CURL error</phrase></term>
3029 <para>This error is generated by the client when trying to send
3030 a request with HTTPS and the HTTPS communication fails.</para>
3035 <term><literal>9-14</literal> <phrase>multicall
3036 errors</phrase></term>
3039 <para>These errors are generated by the server when something
3040 fails inside a system.multicall request.</para>
3045 <term><literal>100-</literal> <phrase>XML parse
3046 errors</phrase></term>
3049 <para>Returns 100 plus the XML parser error code for the fault
3050 that occurred. The <function>faultString</function> returned
3051 explains where the parse error was in the incoming XML
3059 <title>'New style' servers</title>
3061 <para>In the same spirit of simplification that inspired the
3062 <varname>xmlrpc_client::return_type</varname> class variable, a new
3063 class variable has been added to the server class:
3064 <varname>functions_parameters_type</varname>. When set to 'phpvals',
3065 the functions registered in the server dispatch map will be called
3066 with plain php values as parameters, instead of a single xmlrpcmsg
3067 instance parameter. The return value of those functions is expected to
3068 be a plain php value, too. An example is worth a thousand
3069 words:<programlisting language="php">
3070 function foo($usr_id, $out_lang='en') {
3071 global $xmlrpcerruser;
3075 if ($someErrorCondition)
3076 return new xmlrpcresp(0, $xmlrpcerruser+1, 'DOH!');
3081 'picture' => new xmlrpcval(file_get_contents($picOfTheGuy), 'base64')
3085 $s = new xmlrpc_server(
3087 "examples.myFunc" => array(
3088 "function" => "bar::foobar",
3089 "signature" => array(
3090 array($xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcInt),
3091 array($xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcInt, $xmlrpcString)
3095 $s->functions_parameters_type = 'phpvals';
3097 </programlisting>There are a few things to keep in mind when using this
3098 simplified syntax:</para>
3100 <para>to return an xmlrpc error, the method handler function must
3101 return an instance of <classname>xmlrpcresp</classname>. The only
3102 other way for the server to know when an error response should be
3103 served to the client is to throw an exception and set the server's
3104 <varname>exception_handling</varname> memeber var to 1;</para>
3106 <para>to return a base64 value, the method handler function must
3107 encode it on its own, creating an instance of an xmlrpcval
3110 <para>the method handler function cannot determine the name of the
3111 xmlrpc method it is serving, unlike standard handler functions that
3112 can retrieve it from the message object;</para>
3114 <para>when receiving nested parameters, the method handler function
3115 has no way to distinguish a php string that was sent as base64 value
3116 from one that was sent as a string value;</para>
3118 <para>this has a direct consequence on the support of
3119 system.multicall: a method whose signature contains datetime or base64
3120 values will not be available to multicall calls;</para>
3122 <para>last but not least, the direct parsing of xml to php values is
3123 much faster than using xmlrpcvals, and allows the library to handle
3124 much bigger messages without allocating all available server memory or
3125 smashing PHP recursive call stack.</para>
3130 <chapter id="globalvars">
3131 <title>Global variables</title>
3133 <para>Many global variables are defined in the xmlrpc.inc file. Some of
3134 those are meant to be used as constants (and modifying their value might
3135 cause unpredictable behaviour), while some others can be modified in your
3136 php scripts to alter the behaviour of the xml-rpc client and
3140 <title>"Constant" variables</title>
3143 <title>$xmlrpcerruser</title>
3145 <para><fieldsynopsis>
3146 <varname>$xmlrpcerruser</varname>
3148 <initializer>800</initializer>
3149 </fieldsynopsis>The minimum value for errors reported by user
3150 implemented XML-RPC servers. Error numbers lower than that are
3151 reserved for library usage.</para>
3155 <title>$xmlrpcI4, $xmlrpcInt, $xmlrpcBoolean, $xmlrpcDouble,
3156 $xmlrpcString, $xmlrpcDateTime, $xmlrpcBase64, $xmlrpcArray,
3157 $xmlrpcStruct, $xmlrpcValue, $xmlrpcNull</title>
3159 <para>For convenience the strings representing the XML-RPC types have
3160 been encoded as global variables:<programlisting language="php">
3163 $xmlrpcBoolean="boolean";
3164 $xmlrpcDouble="double";
3165 $xmlrpcString="string";
3166 $xmlrpcDateTime="dateTime.iso8601";
3167 $xmlrpcBase64="base64";
3168 $xmlrpcArray="array";
3169 $xmlrpcStruct="struct";
3170 $xmlrpcValue="undefined";
3172 </programlisting></para>
3176 <title>$xmlrpcTypes, $xmlrpc_valid_parents, $xmlrpcerr, $xmlrpcstr,
3177 $xmlrpcerrxml, $xmlrpc_backslash, $_xh, $xml_iso88591_Entities,
3178 $xmlEntities, $xmlrpcs_capabilities</title>
3180 <para>Reserved for internal usage.</para>
3185 <title>Variables whose value can be modified</title>
3187 <sect2 id="xmlrpc-defencoding" xreflabel="xmlrpc_defencoding">
3188 <title xreflabel="">xmlrpc_defencoding</title>
3191 <varname>$xmlrpc_defencoding</varname>
3193 <initializer>"UTF8"</initializer>
3196 <para>This variable defines the character set encoding that will be
3197 used by the xml-rpc client and server to decode the received messages,
3198 when a specific charset declaration is not found (in the messages sent
3199 non-ascii chars are always encoded using character references, so that
3200 the produced xml is valid regardless of the charset encoding
3203 <para>Allowed values: <literal>"UTF8"</literal>,
3204 <literal>"ISO-8859-1"</literal>, <literal>"ASCII".</literal></para>
3206 <para>Note that the appropriate RFC actually mandates that XML
3207 received over HTTP without indication of charset encoding be treated
3208 as US-ASCII, but many servers and clients 'in the wild' violate the
3209 standard, and assume the default encoding is UTF-8.</para>
3213 <title>xmlrpc_internalencoding</title>
3215 <para><fieldsynopsis>
3216 <varname>$xmlrpc_internalencoding</varname>
3218 <initializer>"ISO-8859-1"</initializer>
3219 </fieldsynopsis>This variable defines the character set encoding
3220 that the library uses to transparently encode into valid XML the
3221 xml-rpc values created by the user and to re-encode the received
3222 xml-rpc values when it passes them to the PHP application. It only
3223 affects xml-rpc values of string type. It is a separate value from
3224 xmlrpc_defencoding, allowing e.g. to send/receive xml messages encoded
3225 on-the-wire in US-ASCII and process them as UTF-8. It defaults to the
3226 character set used internally by PHP (unless you are running an
3227 MBString-enabled installation), so you should change it only in
3228 special situations, if e.g. the string values exchanged in the xml-rpc
3229 messages are directly inserted into / fetched from a database
3230 configured to return UTF8 encoded strings to PHP. Example
3233 <para><programlisting language="php">
3236 include('xmlrpc.inc');
3237 $xmlrpc_internalencoding = 'UTF-8'; // this has to be set after the inclusion above
3238 $v = new xmlrpcval('κόÏ
\83με'); // This xmlrpc value will be correctly serialized as the greek word 'kosme'
3239 </programlisting></para>
3243 <title>xmlrpcName</title>
3245 <para><fieldsynopsis>
3246 <varname>$xmlrpcName</varname>
3248 <initializer>"XML-RPC for PHP"</initializer>
3249 </fieldsynopsis>The string representation of the name of the XML-RPC
3250 for PHP library. It is used by the client for building the User-Agent
3251 HTTP header that is sent with every request to the server. You can
3252 change its value if you need to customize the User-Agent
3257 <title>xmlrpcVersion</title>
3259 <para><fieldsynopsis>
3260 <varname>$xmlrpcVersion</varname>
3262 <initializer>"2.2"</initializer>
3263 </fieldsynopsis>The string representation of the version number of
3264 the XML-RPC for PHP library in use. It is used by the client for
3265 building the User-Agent HTTP header that is sent with every request to
3266 the server. You can change its value if you need to customize the
3267 User-Agent string.</para>
3271 <title>xmlrpc_null_extension</title>
3273 <para>When set to <constant>TRUE</constant>, the lib will enable
3274 support for the <NIL/> (and <EX:NIL/>) xmlrpc value, as
3275 per the extension to the standard proposed here. This means that
3276 <NIL/> and <EX:NIL/> tags received will be parsed as valid
3277 xmlrpc, and the corresponding xmlrpcvals will return "null" for
3278 <methodname>scalarTyp()</methodname>.</para>
3282 <title>xmlrpc_null_apache_encoding</title>
3284 <para>When set to <literal>TRUE</literal>, php NULL values encoded
3285 into <classname>xmlrpcval</classname> objects get serialized using the
3286 <literal><EX:NIL/></literal> tag instead of
3287 <literal><NIL/></literal>. Please note that both forms are
3288 always accepted as input regardless of the value of this
3294 <chapter id="helpers">
3295 <title>Helper functions</title>
3297 <para>XML-RPC for PHP contains some helper functions which you can use to
3298 make processing of XML-RPC requests easier.</para>
3301 <title>Date functions</title>
3303 <para>The XML-RPC specification has this to say on dates:</para>
3306 <para id="wrap_xmlrpc_method">Don't assume a timezone. It should be
3307 specified by the server in its documentation what assumptions it makes
3308 about timezones.</para>
3311 <para>Unfortunately, this means that date processing isn't
3312 straightforward. Although XML-RPC uses ISO 8601 format dates, it doesn't
3313 use the timezone specifier.</para>
3315 <para>We strongly recommend that in every case where you pass dates in
3316 XML-RPC calls, you use UTC (GMT) as your timezone. Most computer
3317 languages include routines for handling GMT times natively, and you
3318 won't have to translate between timezones.</para>
3320 <para>For more information about dates, see <ulink
3321 url="http://www.uic.edu/year2000/datefmt.html">ISO 8601: The Right
3322 Format for Dates</ulink>, which has a handy link to a PDF of the ISO
3323 8601 specification. Note that XML-RPC uses exactly one of the available
3324 representations: CCYYMMDDTHH:MM:SS.</para>
3326 <sect2 id="iso8601encode" xreflabel="iso8601_encode()">
3327 <title>iso8601_encode</title>
3331 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>iso8601_encode</function></funcdef>
3333 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$time_t</parameter></paramdef>
3336 choice="opt"><type>int</type><parameter>$utc</parameter><initializer>0</initializer></paramdef>
3340 <para>Returns an ISO 8601 formatted date generated from the UNIX
3341 timestamp <parameter>$time_t</parameter>, as returned by the PHP
3342 function <function>time()</function>.</para>
3344 <para>The argument <parameter>$utc</parameter> can be omitted, in
3345 which case it defaults to <literal>0</literal>. If it is set to
3346 <literal>1</literal>, then the function corrects the time passed in
3347 for UTC. Example: if you're in the GMT-6:00 timezone and set
3348 <parameter>$utc</parameter>, you will receive a date representation
3349 six hours ahead of your local time.</para>
3351 <para>The included demo program <filename>vardemo.php</filename>
3352 includes a demonstration of this function.</para>
3355 <sect2 id="iso8601decode" xreflabel="iso8601_decode()">
3356 <title>iso8601_decode</title>
3360 <funcdef><type>int</type><function>iso8601_decode</function></funcdef>
3362 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$isoString</parameter></paramdef>
3364 <paramdef><type>int</type><parameter>$utc</parameter><initializer>0</initializer></paramdef>
3368 <para>Returns a UNIX timestamp from an ISO 8601 encoded time and date
3369 string passed in. If <parameter>$utc</parameter> is
3370 <literal>1</literal> then <parameter>$isoString</parameter> is assumed
3371 to be in the UTC timezone, and thus the result is also UTC: otherwise,
3372 the timezone is assumed to be your local timezone and you receive a
3373 local timestamp.</para>
3377 <sect1 id="arrayuse">
3378 <title>Easy use with nested PHP values</title>
3380 <para>Dan Libby was kind enough to contribute two helper functions that
3381 make it easier to translate to and from PHP values. This makes it easier
3382 to deal with complex structures. At the moment support is limited to
3383 <type>int</type>, <type>double</type>, <type>string</type>,
3384 <type>array</type>, <type>datetime</type> and <type>struct</type>
3385 datatypes; note also that all PHP arrays are encoded as structs, except
3386 arrays whose keys are integer numbers starting with 0 and incremented by
3389 <para>These functions reside in <filename>xmlrpc.inc</filename>.</para>
3391 <sect2 id="phpxmlrpcdecode">
3392 <title>php_xmlrpc_decode</title>
3396 <funcdef><type>mixed</type><function>php_xmlrpc_decode</function></funcdef>
3398 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><parameter>$xmlrpc_val</parameter></paramdef>
3400 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
3404 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>php_xmlrpc_decode</function></funcdef>
3406 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcmsg</type><parameter>$xmlrpcmsg_val</parameter></paramdef>
3408 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
3412 <para>Returns a native PHP value corresponding to the values found in
3413 the <type>xmlrpcval</type> <parameter>$xmlrpc_val</parameter>,
3414 translated into PHP types. Base-64 and datetime values are
3415 automatically decoded to strings.</para>
3417 <para>In the second form, returns an array containing the parameters
3419 <parameter><classname>xmlrpcmsg</classname>_val</parameter>, decoded
3420 to php types.</para>
3422 <para>The <parameter>options</parameter> parameter is optional. If
3423 specified, it must consist of an array of options to be enabled in the
3424 decoding process. At the moment the only valid option are
3425 <symbol>decode_php_objs</symbol> and
3426 <literal>dates_as_objects</literal>. When the first is set, php
3427 objects that have been converted to xml-rpc structs using the
3428 <function>php_xmlrpc_encode</function> function and a corresponding
3429 encoding option will be converted back into object values instead of
3430 arrays (provided that the class definition is available at
3431 reconstruction time). When the second is set, XML-RPC datetime values
3432 will be converted into native <classname>dateTime</classname> objects
3433 instead of strings.</para>
3435 <para><emphasis><emphasis>WARNING</emphasis>:</emphasis> please take
3436 extreme care before enabling the <symbol>decode_php_objs</symbol>
3437 option: when php objects are rebuilt from the received xml, their
3438 constructor function will be silently invoked. This means that you are
3439 allowing the remote end to trigger execution of uncontrolled PHP code
3440 on your server, opening the door to code injection exploits. Only
3441 enable this option when you have complete trust of the remote
3442 server/client.</para>
3444 <para>Example:<programlisting language="php">
3445 // wrapper to expose an existing php function as xmlrpc method handler
3446 function foo_wrapper($m)
3448 $params = php_xmlrpc_decode($m);
3449 $retval = call_user_func_array('foo', $params);
3450 return new xmlrpcresp(new xmlrpcval($retval)); // foo return value will be serialized as string
3453 $s = new xmlrpc_server(array(
3454 "examples.myFunc1" => array(
3455 "function" => "foo_wrapper",
3456 "signatures" => ...
3458 </programlisting></para>
3461 <sect2 id="phpxmlrpcencode">
3462 <title>php_xmlrpc_encode</title>
3466 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>php_xmlrpc_encode</function></funcdef>
3468 <paramdef><type>mixed</type><parameter>$phpval</parameter></paramdef>
3470 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
3474 <para>Returns an <type>xmlrpcval</type> object populated with the PHP
3475 values in <parameter>$phpval</parameter>. Works recursively on arrays
3476 and objects, encoding numerically indexed php arrays into array-type
3477 xmlrpcval objects and non numerically indexed php arrays into
3478 struct-type xmlrpcval objects. Php objects are encoded into
3479 struct-type xmlrpcvals, excepted for php values that are already
3480 instances of the xmlrpcval class or descendants thereof, which will
3481 not be further encoded. Note that there's no support for encoding php
3482 values into base-64 values. Encoding of date-times is optionally
3483 carried on on php strings with the correct format.</para>
3485 <para>The <parameter>options</parameter> parameter is optional. If
3486 specified, it must consist of an array of options to be enabled in the
3487 encoding process. At the moment the only valid options are
3488 <symbol>encode_php_objs</symbol>, <literal>null_extension</literal>
3489 and <symbol>auto_dates</symbol>.</para>
3491 <para>The first will enable the creation of 'particular' xmlrpcval
3492 objects out of php objects, that add a "php_class" xml attribute to
3493 their serialized representation. This attribute allows the function
3494 php_xmlrpc_decode to rebuild the native php objects (provided that the
3495 same class definition exists on both sides of the communication). The
3496 second allows to encode php <literal>NULL</literal> values to the
3497 <literal><NIL/></literal> (or
3498 <literal><EX:NIL/></literal>, see ...) tag. The last encodes any
3499 string that matches the ISO8601 format into an XML-RPC
3502 <para>Example:<programlisting language="php">
3503 // the easy way to build a complex xml-rpc struct, showing nested base64 value and datetime values
3504 $val = php_xmlrpc_encode(array(
3505 'first struct_element: an int' => 666,
3506 'second: an array' => array ('apple', 'orange', 'banana'),
3507 'third: a base64 element' => new xmlrpcval('hello world', 'base64'),
3508 'fourth: a datetime' => '20060107T01:53:00'
3509 ), array('auto_dates'));
3510 </programlisting></para>
3514 <title>php_xmlrpc_decode_xml</title>
3518 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval | xmlrpcresp |
3519 xmlrpcmsg</type><function>php_xmlrpc_decode_xml</function></funcdef>
3521 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$xml</parameter></paramdef>
3523 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$options</parameter></paramdef>
3527 <para>Decodes the xml representation of either an xmlrpc request,
3528 response or single value, returning the corresponding php-xmlrpc
3529 object, or <literal>FALSE</literal> in case of an error.</para>
3531 <para>The <parameter>options</parameter> parameter is optional. If
3532 specified, it must consist of an array of options to be enabled in the
3533 decoding process. At the moment, no option is supported.</para>
3535 <para>Example:<programlisting language="php">
3536 $text = '<value><array><data><value>Hello world</value></data></array></value>';
3537 $val = php_xmlrpc_decode_xml($text);
3538 if ($val) echo 'Found a value of type '.$val->kindOf(); else echo 'Found invalid xml';
3539 </programlisting></para>
3544 <title>Automatic conversion of php functions into xmlrpc methods (and
3547 <para>For the extremely lazy coder, helper functions have been added
3548 that allow to convert a php function into an xmlrpc method, and a
3549 remotely exposed xmlrpc method into a local php function - or a set of
3550 methods into a php class. Note that these comes with many caveat.</para>
3553 <title>wrap_xmlrpc_method</title>
3557 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>wrap_xmlrpc_method</function></funcdef>
3559 <paramdef>$client</paramdef>
3561 <paramdef>$methodname</paramdef>
3563 <paramdef>$extra_options</paramdef>
3567 <funcdef><type>string</type><function>wrap_xmlrpc_method</function></funcdef>
3569 <paramdef>$client</paramdef>
3571 <paramdef>$methodname</paramdef>
3573 <paramdef>$signum</paramdef>
3575 <paramdef>$timeout</paramdef>
3577 <paramdef>$protocol</paramdef>
3579 <paramdef>$funcname</paramdef>
3583 <para>Given an xmlrpc server and a method name, creates a php wrapper
3584 function that will call the remote method and return results using
3585 native php types for both params and results. The generated php
3586 function will return an xmlrpcresp object for failed xmlrpc
3589 <para>The second syntax is deprecated, and is listed here only for
3590 backward compatibility.</para>
3592 <para>The server must support the
3593 <methodname>system.methodSignature</methodname> xmlrpc method call for
3594 this function to work.</para>
3596 <para>The <parameter>client</parameter> param must be a valid
3597 xmlrpc_client object, previously created with the address of the
3598 target xmlrpc server, and to which the preferred communication options
3599 have been set.</para>
3601 <para>The optional parameters can be passed as array key,value pairs
3602 in the <parameter>extra_options</parameter> param.</para>
3604 <para>The <parameter>signum</parameter> optional param has the purpose
3605 of indicating which method signature to use, if the given server
3606 method has multiple signatures (defaults to 0).</para>
3608 <para>The <parameter>timeout</parameter> and
3609 <parameter>protocol</parameter> optional params are the same as in the
3610 <methodname>xmlrpc_client::send()</methodname> method.</para>
3612 <para>If set, the optional <parameter>new_function_name</parameter>
3613 parameter indicates which name should be used for the generated
3614 function. In case it is not set the function name will be
3615 auto-generated.</para>
3617 <para>If the <literal>return_source</literal> optional parameter is
3618 set, the function will return the php source code to build the wrapper
3619 function, instead of evaluating it (useful to save the code and use it
3620 later as stand-alone xmlrpc client).</para>
3622 <para>If the <literal>encode_php_objs</literal> optional parameter is
3623 set, instances of php objects later passed as parameters to the newly
3624 created function will receive a 'special' treatment that allows the
3625 server to rebuild them as php objects instead of simple arrays. Note
3626 that this entails using a "slightly augmented" version of the xmlrpc
3627 protocol (ie. using element attributes), which might not be understood
3628 by xmlrpc servers implemented using other libraries.</para>
3630 <para>If the <literal>decode_php_objs</literal> optional parameter is
3631 set, instances of php objects that have been appropriately encoded by
3632 the server using a coordinate option will be deserialized as php
3633 objects instead of simple arrays (the same class definition should be
3634 present server side and client side).</para>
3636 <para><emphasis>Note that this might pose a security risk</emphasis>,
3637 since in order to rebuild the object instances their constructor
3638 method has to be invoked, and this means that the remote server can
3639 trigger execution of unforeseen php code on the client: not really a
3640 code injection, but almost. Please enable this option only when you
3641 trust the remote server.</para>
3643 <para>In case of an error during generation of the wrapper function,
3644 FALSE is returned, otherwise the name (or source code) of the new
3647 <para>Known limitations: server must support
3648 <methodname>system.methodsignature</methodname> for the wanted xmlrpc
3649 method; for methods that expose multiple signatures, only one can be
3650 picked; for remote calls with nested xmlrpc params, the caller of the
3651 generated php function has to encode on its own the params passed to
3652 the php function if these are structs or arrays whose (sub)members
3653 include values of type base64.</para>
3655 <para>Note: calling the generated php function 'might' be slow: a new
3656 xmlrpc client is created on every invocation and an xmlrpc-connection
3657 opened+closed. An extra 'debug' param is appended to the parameter
3658 list of the generated php function, useful for debugging
3661 <para>Example usage:</para>
3663 <programlisting language="php">
3664 $c = new xmlrpc_client('http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/server.php');
3666 $function = wrap_xmlrpc_method($client, 'examples.getStateName');
3669 die('Cannot introspect remote method');
3672 $statename = $function($a);
3673 if (is_a($statename, 'xmlrpcresp')) // call failed
3675 echo 'Call failed: '.$statename->faultCode().'. Calling again with debug on';
3676 $function($a, true);
3679 echo "OK, state nr. $stateno is $statename";
3684 <sect2 id="wrap_php_function">
3685 <title>wrap_php_function</title>
3689 <funcdef><type>array</type><function>wrap_php_function</function></funcdef>
3691 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$funcname</parameter></paramdef>
3693 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$wrapper_function_name</parameter></paramdef>
3695 <paramdef><type>array</type><parameter>$extra_options</parameter></paramdef>
3699 <para>Given a user-defined PHP function, create a PHP 'wrapper'
3700 function that can be exposed as xmlrpc method from an xmlrpc_server
3701 object and called from remote clients, and return the appropriate
3702 definition to be added to a server's dispatch map.</para>
3704 <para>The optional <parameter>$wrapper_function_name</parameter>
3705 specifies the name that will be used for the auto-generated
3708 <para>Since php is a typeless language, to infer types of input and
3709 output parameters, it relies on parsing the javadoc-style comment
3710 block associated with the given function. Usage of xmlrpc native types
3711 (such as datetime.dateTime.iso8601 and base64) in the docblock @param
3712 tag is also allowed, if you need the php function to receive/send data
3713 in that particular format (note that base64 encoding/decoding is
3714 transparently carried out by the lib, while datetime vals are passed
3715 around as strings).</para>
3717 <para>Known limitations: only works for
3718 user-defined functions, not for PHP internal functions (reflection
3719 does not support retrieving number/type of params for those); the
3720 wrapped php function will not be able to programmatically return an
3721 xmlrpc error response.</para>
3723 <para>If the <literal>return_source</literal> optional parameter is
3724 set, the function will return the php source code to build the wrapper
3725 function, instead of evaluating it (useful to save the code and use it
3726 later in a stand-alone xmlrpc server). It will be in the stored in the
3727 <literal>source</literal> member of the returned array.</para>
3729 <para>If the <literal>suppress_warnings</literal> optional parameter
3730 is set, any runtime warning generated while processing the
3731 user-defined php function will be catched and not be printed in the
3732 generated xml response.</para>
3734 <para>If the <parameter>extra_options</parameter> array contains the
3735 <literal>encode_php_objs</literal> value, wrapped functions returning
3736 php objects will generate "special" xmlrpc responses: when the xmlrpc
3737 decoding of those responses is carried out by this same lib, using the
3738 appropriate param in php_xmlrpc_decode(), the objects will be
3741 <para>In short: php objects can be serialized, too (except for their
3742 resource members), using this function. Other libs might choke on the
3743 very same xml that will be generated in this case (i.e. it has a
3744 nonstandard attribute on struct element tags)</para>
3746 <para>If the <literal>decode_php_objs</literal> optional parameter is
3747 set, instances of php objects that have been appropriately encoded by
3748 the client using a coordinate option will be deserialized and passed
3749 to the user function as php objects instead of simple arrays (the same
3750 class definition should be present server side and client
3753 <para><emphasis>Note that this might pose a security risk</emphasis>,
3754 since in order to rebuild the object instances their constructor
3755 method has to be invoked, and this means that the remote client can
3756 trigger execution of unforeseen php code on the server: not really a
3757 code injection, but almost. Please enable this option only when you
3758 trust the remote clients.</para>
3760 <para>Example usage:</para>
3762 <para><programlisting language="php">/**
3763 * State name from state number decoder. NB: do NOT remove this comment block.
3764 * @param integer $stateno the state number
3765 * @return string the name of the state (or error description)
3767 function findstate($stateno)
3770 if (isset($stateNames[$stateno-1]))
3772 return $stateNames[$stateno-1];
3776 return "I don't have a state for the index '" . $stateno . "'";
3780 // wrap php function, build xmlrpc server
3782 $findstate_sig = wrap_php_function('findstate');
3784 $methods['examples.getStateName'] = $findstate_sig;
3785 $srv = new xmlrpc_server($methods);
3786 </programlisting></para>
3790 <sect1 id="deprecated">
3791 <title>Functions removed from the library</title>
3793 <para>The following two functions have been deprecated in version 1.1 of
3794 the library, and removed in version 2, in order to avoid conflicts with
3795 the EPI xml-rpc library, which also defines two functions with the same
3798 <para>To ease the transition to the new naming scheme and avoid breaking
3799 existing implementations, the following scheme has been adopted:
3802 <para>If EPI-XMLRPC is not active in the current PHP installation,
3803 the constant <literal>XMLRPC_EPI_ENABLED</literal> will be set to
3804 <literal>'0'</literal></para>
3808 <para>If EPI-XMLRPC is active in the current PHP installation, the
3809 constant <literal>XMLRPC_EPI_ENABLED</literal> will be set to
3810 <literal>'1'</literal></para>
3812 </itemizedlist></para>
3814 <para>The following documentation is kept for historical
3817 <sect2 id="xmlrpcdecode">
3818 <title>xmlrpc_decode</title>
3822 <funcdef><type>mixed</type><function>xmlrpc_decode</function></funcdef>
3824 <paramdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><parameter>$xmlrpc_val</parameter></paramdef>
3828 <para>Alias for php_xmlrpc_decode.</para>
3831 <sect2 id="xmlrpcencode">
3832 <title>xmlrpc_encode</title>
3836 <funcdef><type>xmlrpcval</type><function>xmlrpc_encode</function></funcdef>
3838 <paramdef><type>mixed</type><parameter>$phpval</parameter></paramdef>
3842 <para>Alias for php_xmlrpc_encode.</para>
3846 <sect1 id="debugging">
3847 <title>Debugging aids</title>
3850 <title>xmlrpc_debugmsg</title>
3854 <funcdef><type>void</type><function>xmlrpc_debugmsg</function></funcdef>
3856 <paramdef><type>string</type><parameter>$debugstring</parameter></paramdef>
3860 <para>Sends the contents of <parameter>$debugstring</parameter> in XML
3861 comments in the server return payload. If a PHP client has debugging
3862 turned on, the user will be able to see server debug
3865 <para>Use this function in your methods so you can pass back
3866 diagnostic information. It is only available from
3867 <filename>xmlrpcs.inc</filename>.</para>
3872 <chapter id="reserved" xreflabel="Reserved methods">
3873 <title>Reserved methods</title>
3875 <para>In order to extend the functionality offered by XML-RPC servers
3876 without impacting on the protocol, reserved methods are supported in this
3879 <para>All methods starting with <function>system.</function> are
3880 considered reserved by the server. PHP for XML-RPC itself provides four
3881 special methods, detailed in this chapter.</para>
3883 <para>Note that all server objects will automatically respond to clients
3884 querying these methods, unless the property
3885 <property>allow_system_funcs</property> has been set to
3886 <constant>false</constant> before calling the
3887 <methodname>service()</methodname> method. This might pose a security risk
3888 if the server is exposed to public access, e.g. on the internet.</para>
3891 <title>system.getCapabilities</title>
3897 <title>system.listMethods</title>
3899 <para>This method may be used to enumerate the methods implemented by
3900 the XML-RPC server.</para>
3902 <para>The <function>system.listMethods</function> method requires no
3903 parameters. It returns an array of strings, each of which is the name of
3904 a method implemented by the server.</para>
3907 <sect1 id="sysmethodsig">
3908 <title>system.methodSignature</title>
3910 <para>This method takes one parameter, the name of a method implemented
3911 by the XML-RPC server.</para>
3913 <para>It returns an array of possible signatures for this method. A
3914 signature is an array of types. The first of these types is the return
3915 type of the method, the rest are parameters.</para>
3917 <para>Multiple signatures (i.e. overloading) are permitted: this is the
3918 reason that an array of signatures are returned by this method.</para>
3920 <para>Signatures themselves are restricted to the top level parameters
3921 expected by a method. For instance if a method expects one array of
3922 structs as a parameter, and it returns a string, its signature is simply
3923 "string, array". If it expects three integers, its signature is "string,
3924 int, int, int".</para>
3926 <para>For parameters that can be of more than one type, the "undefined"
3927 string is supported.</para>
3929 <para>If no signature is defined for the method, a not-array value is
3930 returned. Therefore this is the way to test for a non-signature, if
3931 <parameter>$resp</parameter> below is the response object from a method
3932 call to <function>system.methodSignature</function>:</para>
3934 <programlisting language="php">
3935 $v = $resp->value();
3936 if ($v->kindOf() != "array") {
3937 // then the method did not have a signature defined
3941 <para>See the <filename>introspect.php</filename> demo included in this
3942 distribution for an example of using this method.</para>
3945 <sect1 id="sysmethhelp">
3946 <title>system.methodHelp</title>
3948 <para>This method takes one parameter, the name of a method implemented
3949 by the XML-RPC server.</para>
3951 <para>It returns a documentation string describing the use of that
3952 method. If no such string is available, an empty string is
3955 <para>The documentation string may contain HTML markup.</para>
3959 <title>system.multicall</title>
3961 <para>This method takes one parameter, an array of 'request' struct
3962 types. Each request struct must contain a
3963 <parameter>methodName</parameter> member of type string and a
3964 <parameter>params</parameter> member of type array, and corresponds to
3965 the invocation of the corresponding method.</para>
3967 <para>It returns a response of type array, with each value of the array
3968 being either an error struct (containing the faultCode and faultString
3969 members) or the successful response value of the corresponding single
3974 <chapter id="examples" xreflabel="Examples">
3975 <title>Examples</title>
3977 <para>The best examples are to be found in the sample files included with
3978 the distribution. Some are included here.</para>
3980 <sect1 id="statename">
3981 <title>XML-RPC client: state name query</title>
3983 <para>Code to get the corresponding state name from a number (1-50) from
3984 the demo server available on SourceForge</para>
3986 <programlisting language="php">
3987 $m = new xmlrpcmsg('examples.getStateName',
3988 array(new xmlrpcval($HTTP_POST_VARS["stateno"], "int")));
3989 $c = new xmlrpc_client("/server.php", "phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net", 80);
3990 $r = $c->send($m);
3991 if (!$r->faultCode()) {
3992 $v = $r->value();
3993 print "State number " . htmlentities($HTTP_POST_VARS["stateno"]) . " is " .
3994 htmlentities($v->scalarval()) . "<BR>";
3995 print "<HR>I got this value back<BR><PRE>" .
3996 htmlentities($r->serialize()) . "</PRE><HR>\n";
3998 print "Fault <BR>";
3999 print "Code: " . htmlentities($r->faultCode()) . "<BR>" .
4000 "Reason: '" . htmlentities($r->faultString()) . "'<BR>";
4006 <title>Executing a multicall call</title>
4008 <para>To be documented...</para>
4013 <title>Frequently Asked Questions</title>
4016 <title>How to send custom XML as payload of a method call</title>
4018 <para>Unfortunately, at the time the XML-RPC spec was designed, support
4019 for namespaces in XML was not as ubiquitous as it is now. As a
4020 consequence, no support was provided in the protocol for embedding XML
4021 elements from other namespaces into an xmlrpc request.</para>
4023 <para>To send an XML "chunk" as payload of a method call or response,
4024 two options are available: either send the complete XML block as a
4025 string xmlrpc value, or as a base64 value. Since the '<' character in
4026 string values is encoded as '&lt;' in the xml payload of the method
4027 call, the XML string will not break the surrounding xmlrpc, unless
4028 characters outside of the assumed character set are used. The second
4029 method has the added benefits of working independently of the charset
4030 encoding used for the xml to be transmitted, and preserving exactly
4031 whitespace, whilst incurring in some extra message length and cpu load
4032 (for carrying out the base64 encoding/decoding).</para>
4036 <title>Is there any limitation on the size of the requests / responses
4037 that can be successfully sent?</title>
4039 <para>Yes. But I have no hard figure to give; it most likely will depend
4040 on the version of PHP in usage and its configuration.</para>
4042 <para>Keep in mind that this library is not optimized for speed nor for
4043 memory usage. Better alternatives exist when there are strict
4044 requirements on throughput or resource usage, such as the php native
4045 xmlrpc extension (see the PHP manual for more information).</para>
4047 <para>Keep in mind also that HTTP is probably not the best choice in
4048 such a situation, and XML is a deadly enemy. CSV formatted data over
4049 socket would be much more efficient.</para>
4051 <para>If you really need to move a massive amount of data around, and
4052 you are crazy enough to do it using phpxmlrpc, your best bet is to
4053 bypass usage of the xmlrpcval objects, at least in the decoding phase,
4054 and have the server (or client) object return to the calling function
4055 directly php values (see <varname>xmlrpc_client::return_type</varname>
4056 and <varname>xmlrpc_server::functions_parameters_type</varname> for more
4061 <title>My server (client) returns an error whenever the client (server)
4062 returns accented characters</title>
4064 <para>To be documented...</para>
4068 <title>How to enable long-lasting method calls</title>
4070 <para>To be documented...</para>
4074 <title>My client returns "XML-RPC Fault #2: Invalid return payload:
4075 enable debugging to examine incoming payload": what should I do?</title>
4077 <para>The response you are seeing is a default error response that the
4078 client object returns to the php application when the server did not
4079 respond to the call with a valid xmlrpc response.</para>
4081 <para>The most likely cause is that you are not using the correct URL
4082 when creating the client object, or you do not have appropriate access
4083 rights to the web page you are requesting, or some other common http
4084 misconfiguration.</para>
4086 <para>To find out what the server is really returning to your client,
4087 you have to enable the debug mode of the client, using
4088 $client->setdebug(1);</para>
4092 <title>How can I save to a file the xml of the xmlrpc responses received
4093 from servers?</title>
4095 <para>If what you need is to save the responses received from the server
4096 as xml, you have two options:</para>
4098 <para>1- use the serialize() method on the response object.</para>
4100 <programlisting language="php">
4101 $resp = $client->send($msg);
4102 if (!$resp->faultCode())
4103 $data_to_be_saved = $resp->serialize();
4106 <para>Note that this will not be 100% accurate, since the xml generated
4107 by the response object can be different from the xml received,
4108 especially if there is some character set conversion involved, or such
4109 (eg. if you receive an empty string tag as <string/>, serialize()
4110 will output <string></string>), or if the server sent back
4111 as response something invalid (in which case the xml generated client
4112 side using serialize() will correspond to the error response generated
4113 internally by the lib).</para>
4115 <para>2 - set the client object to return the raw xml received instead
4116 of the decoded objects:</para>
4118 <programlisting language="php">
4119 $client = new xmlrpc_client($url);
4120 $client->return_type = 'xml';
4121 $resp = $client->send($msg);
4122 if (!$resp->faultCode())
4123 $data_to_be_saved = $resp->value();
4126 <para>Note that using this method the xml response response will not be
4127 parsed at all by the library, only the http communication protocol will
4128 be checked. This means that xmlrpc responses sent by the server that
4129 would have generated an error response on the client (eg. malformed xml,
4130 responses that have faultcode set, etc...) now will not be flagged as
4131 invalid, and you might end up saving not valid xml but random
4136 <title>Can I use the ms windows character set?</title>
4138 <para>If the data your application is using comes from a Microsoft
4139 application, there are some chances that the character set used to
4140 encode it is CP1252 (the same might apply to data received from an
4141 external xmlrpc server/client, but it is quite rare to find xmlrpc
4142 toolkits that encode to CP1252 instead of UTF8). It is a character set
4143 which is "almost" compatible with ISO 8859-1, but for a few extra
4146 <para>PHP-XMLRPC only supports the ISO 8859-1 and UTF8 character sets.
4147 The net result of this situation is that those extra characters will not
4148 be properly encoded, and will be received at the other end of the
4149 XML-RPC transmission as "garbled data". Unfortunately the library cannot
4150 provide real support for CP1252 because of limitations in the PHP 4 xml
4151 parser. Luckily, we tried our best to support this character set anyway,
4152 and, since version 2.2.1, there is some form of support, left commented
4155 <para>To properly encode outgoing data that is natively in CP1252, you
4156 will have to uncomment all relative code in the file
4157 <filename>xmlrpc.inc</filename> (you can search for the string "1252"),
4158 then set <code>$GLOBALS['xmlrpc_internalencoding']='CP1252';</code>
4159 Please note that all incoming data will then be fed to your application
4160 as UTF-8 to avoid any potential data loss.</para>
4164 <title>Does the library support using cookies / http sessions?</title>
4166 <para>In short: yes, but a little coding is needed to make it
4169 <para>The code below uses sessions to e.g. let the client store a value
4170 on the server and retrieve it later.</para>
4172 <para><programlisting>
4173 $resp = $client->send(new xmlrpcmsg('registervalue', array(new xmlrpcval('foo'), new xmlrpcval('bar'))));
4174 if (!$resp->faultCode())
4176 $cookies = $resp->cookies();
4177 if (array_key_exists('PHPSESSID', $cookies)) // nb: make sure to use the correct session cookie name
4179 $session_id = $cookies['PHPSESSID']['value'];
4181 // do some other stuff here...
4183 $client->setcookie('PHPSESSID', $session_id);
4184 $val = $client->send(new xmlrpcmsg('getvalue', array(new xmlrpcval('foo')));
4187 </programlisting>Server-side sessions are handled normally like in any other
4188 php application. Please see the php manual for more information about
4191 <para>NB: unlike web browsers, not all xmlrpc clients support usage of
4192 http cookies. If you have troubles with sessions and control only the
4193 server side of the communication, please check with the makers of the
4194 xmlrpc client in use.</para>
4198 <appendix id="integration">
4199 <title>Integration with the PHP xmlrpc extension</title>
4201 <para>To be documented more...</para>
4203 <para>In short: for the fastest execution possible, you can enable the php
4204 native xmlrpc extension, and use it in conjunction with phpxmlrpc. The
4205 following code snippet gives an example of such integration</para>
4207 <programlisting language="php">
4208 /*** client side ***/
4209 $c = new xmlrpc_client('http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/server.php');
4211 // tell the client to return raw xml as response value
4212 $c->return_type = 'xml';
4214 // let the native xmlrpc extension take care of encoding request parameters
4215 $r = $c->send(xmlrpc_encode_request('examples.getStateName', $_POST['stateno']));
4217 if ($r->faultCode())
4218 // HTTP transport error
4219 echo 'Got error '.$r->faultCode();
4222 // HTTP request OK, but XML returned from server not parsed yet
4223 $v = xmlrpc_decode($r->value());
4224 // check if we got a valid xmlrpc response from server
4226 echo 'Got invalid response';
4228 // check if server sent a fault response
4229 if (xmlrpc_is_fault($v))
4230 echo 'Got xmlrpc fault '.$v['faultCode'];
4232 echo'Got response: '.htmlentities($v);
4237 <appendix id="substitution">
4238 <title>Substitution of the PHP xmlrpc extension</title>
4240 <para>Yet another interesting situation is when you are using a ready-made
4241 php application, that provides support for the XMLRPC protocol via the
4242 native php xmlrpc extension, but the extension is not available on your
4243 php install (e.g. because of shared hosting constraints).</para>
4245 <para>Since version 2.1, the PHP-XMLRPC library provides a compatibility
4246 layer that aims to be 100% compliant with the xmlrpc extension API. This
4247 means that any code written to run on the extension should obtain the
4248 exact same results, albeit using more resources and a longer processing
4249 time, using the PHP-XMLRPC library and the extension compatibility module.
4250 The module is part of the EXTRAS package, available as a separate download
4251 from the sourceforge.net website, since version 0.2</para>
4254 <appendix id="enough">
4255 <title>'Enough of xmlrpcvals!': new style library usage</title>
4257 <para>To be documented...</para>
4259 <para>In the meantime, see docs about xmlrpc_client::return_type and
4260 xmlrpc_server::functions_parameters_types, as well as php_xmlrpc_encode,
4261 php_xmlrpc_decode and php_xmlrpc_decode_xml</para>
4264 <appendix id="debugger">
4265 <title>Usage of the debugger</title>
4267 <para>A webservice debugger is included in the library to help during
4268 development and testing.</para>
4270 <para>The interface should be self-explicative enough to need little
4271 documentation.</para>
4273 <para><graphic align="center" fileref="debugger.gif"
4274 format="GIF" /></para>
4276 <para>The most useful feature of the debugger is without doubt the "Show
4277 debug info" option. It allows to have a screen dump of the complete http
4278 communication between client and server, including the http headers as
4279 well as the request and response payloads, and is invaluable when
4280 troubleshooting problems with charset encoding, authentication or http
4283 <para>The debugger can take advantage of the JSONRPC library extension, to
4284 allow debugging of JSON-RPC webservices, and of the JS-XMLRPC library
4285 visual editor to allow easy mouse-driven construction of the payload for
4286 remote methods. Both components have to be downloaded separately from the
4287 sourceforge.net web pages and copied to the debugger directory to enable
4288 the extra functionality:</para>
4290 <para><itemizedlist>
4292 <para>to enable jsonrpc functionality, download the PHP-XMLRPC
4293 EXTRAS package, and copy the file <filename>jsonrpc.inc</filename>
4294 either to the same directory as the debugger or somewhere in your
4295 php include path</para>
4297 </itemizedlist><itemizedlist>
4299 <para>to enable the visual value editing dialog, download the
4300 JS-XMLRPC library, and copy somewhere in the web root files
4301 <filename>visualeditor.php</filename>,
4302 <filename>visualeditor.css</filename> and the folders
4303 <filename>yui</filename> and <filename>img</filename>. Then edit the
4304 debugger file <filename>controller.php</filename> and set
4305 appropriately the variable <varname>$editorpath</varname>.</para>
4307 </itemizedlist></para>
4310 <!-- Keep this comment at the end of the file
4315 sgml-minimize-attributes:nil
4316 sgml-always-quote-attributes:t
4319 sgml-parent-document:nil
4320 sgml-exposed-tags:nil
4321 sgml-local-catalogs:nil
4322 sgml-local-ecat-files:nil
4323 sgml-namecase-general:t
4324 sgml-general-insert-case:lower