XML reponses in php

I am working with a SOAP API that no matter how I try I am unable to get it working with PHP ( I was told by others working with this API that they were not able to get it working with any other language other than Perl which is what it is written in). I had to "hack" a bit so PHP could handle it correctly.

The code I am using is:

    <?PHP
$uid = 'username';
$pass = 'password';
$customer_xml = my_api($uid, $pass, 'get_numbers', 'number', 'contains', '1', '0', '0');

function my_api($user, $pass, $func, $request_args){

    $soap = new SoapClient("admin/enswitch_3.9.wsdl", array('trace' => true, 'exceptions' => false));
    $result1 = $soap->$func($user,$pass,$request_args);

    if(isset($soap->__soap_fault)){
            echo 'There was an error connecting via SOAP. Below is the error:';
            print_r($soap->__soap_fault->faultstring);
            }
    elseif(isset($soap->__last_response)){

            echo "Unedited soap response is:\n";
            echo $soap->__last_response."\n";
            echo "\n\n";

            $xml_string = preg_replace("/(<\/?)(\w+):([^>]*>)/", "$1$2$3", $soap->__last_response);
            //We need to replace the text s-gensym and then the number with some random text
            //like xoxo so we can then get the value of $xml->response->xoxo which should be an array
            $xml_string = preg_replace('/s-gensym[0-9]{0,65000}/', 'xoxo', $xml_string);

            $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xml_string);


            $xml = $xml->soapBody;
            $func_response = $func.'Response';

            echo '$xml->$func_response is'."\n";
            print_r($xml->$func_response);
            echo "\n\n";

            echo '$xml->$func_response->xoxo is'."\n";
            print_r( $xml->$func_response->xoxo);
            die();

            return $xml->$func_response->xoxo;
            }
    }
?>

The response that I get from my script code is (phone numbers have been changed to protect them):

My question is how come $xml->$func_response will show multiple responses under "element" xoxo but if I try to print_r on $xml->func_response->xoxo I only get one response. Interesting enough if I do:

    foreach($xml->func_response as $y){
        foreach($y as $z){
          print_r($z)
          }
         }
        }

Then I do get the value for each one but it seems backward to do it that way.

Reformatted XML data

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    soap:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
    xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <soap:Body>
        <get_numbersResponse xmlns="http://www.example.com/Integrics/Enswitch/API">
            <s-gensym3>
                <maximum_seconds xsi:type="xsd:string">-1</maximum_seconds>
                <direct xsi:type="xsd:string">1</direct>
                <fax_dtype xsi:type="xsd:string">hangup</fax_dtype>
                <stype xsi:type="xsd:string">number</stype>
                <emergency_register xsi:type="xsd:string">0</emergency_register>
                <directory xsi:type="xsd:string">1</directory>
                <display xsi:type="xsd:string">12125550432</display>
                <sname_action xsi:type="xsd:string">replace</sname_action>
                <shared xsi:type="xsd:string">0</shared>
                <callerid xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <dtype xsi:type="xsd:string">queue</dtype>
                <sname xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <dnumber xsi:type="xsd:string">696</dnumber>
                <fax_detect xsi:type="xsd:string">0</fax_detect>
                <music xsi:type="xsd:string">0</music>
                <update_routing xsi:type="xsd:string">1</update_routing>
                <routing xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <owner xsi:type="xsd:string">0</owner>
                <ported xsi:type="xsd:string">0</ported>
                <language xsi:type="xsd:string">en</language>
                <fax_dnumber xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <description xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <ingroup xsi:type="xsd:string">12</ingroup>
                <play_message xsi:type="xsd:string">0</play_message>
                <screen xsi:type="xsd:string">0</screen>
                <customer xsi:type="xsd:string">3935</customer>
                <recordgroup xsi:type="xsd:string">0</recordgroup>
                <class xsi:type="xsd:string">212</class>
                <shortcut xsi:type="xsd:string">1</shortcut>
                <alias xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <snumber xsi:type="xsd:string">12125550432</snumber>
            </s-gensym3>
            <s-gensym5>
                <maximum_seconds xsi:type="xsd:string">-1</maximum_seconds>
                <direct xsi:type="xsd:string">1</direct>
                <fax_dtype xsi:type="xsd:string">hangup</fax_dtype>
                <stype xsi:type="xsd:string">number</stype>
                <emergency_register xsi:type="xsd:string">0</emergency_register>
                <directory xsi:type="xsd:string">1</directory>
                <display xsi:type="xsd:string">12125550458 TEST FOR COLLECT CALL DISABLING</display>
                <sname_action xsi:type="xsd:string">replace</sname_action>
                <shared xsi:type="xsd:string">0</shared>
                <callerid xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <dtype xsi:type="xsd:string">forward</dtype>
                <sname xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <dnumber xsi:type="xsd:string">18005551212</dnumber>
                <fax_detect xsi:type="xsd:string">0</fax_detect>
                <music xsi:type="xsd:string">0</music>
                <update_routing xsi:type="xsd:string">0</update_routing>
                <routing xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <owner xsi:type="xsd:string">0</owner>
                <ported xsi:type="xsd:string">0</ported>
                <language xsi:type="xsd:string">en</language>
                <fax_dnumber xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <description xsi:type="xsd:string">TEST FOR COLLECT CALL DISABLING</description>
                <ingroup xsi:type="xsd:string">12</ingroup>
                <play_message xsi:type="xsd:string">0</play_message>
                <screen xsi:type="xsd:string">0</screen>
                <customer xsi:type="xsd:string">3935</customer>
                <recordgroup xsi:type="xsd:string">0</recordgroup>
                <class xsi:type="xsd:string">212</class>
                <shortcut xsi:type="xsd:string">1</shortcut>
                <alias xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                <snumber xsi:type="xsd:string">12125550458</snumber>
            </s-gensym5>
        </get_numbersResponse>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Solution

There is no reason why, just because SOAP interface was implemented in Perl, you need to use Perl to write your SOAP client

You don't explain why you're removing the namespaces, or changing all of the s-gensym* elements to xoxo but it isn't necessary

There is one gotcha: if you want to use a non-blank namespace in an XPath expression then you have to name a prefix and use it in your code. The element

<get_numbersResponse xmlns="http://www.example.com/Integrics/Enswitch/API"> ... </get_numbersResponse>

has a blank default namespace, so I have bound the prefix def to it in my code below so that it can now be referred to as def:get_numbersResponse. Apart from that you can simply navigate the XML data using XPath expressions. The soap namespace prefix is already defined by the XML, so I can refer to soap:Envelope and soap:Body without defining it in my code

You don't say what data you want, but I have extracted the display field from both s-gensym3 and s-gensym5. And my code reads the XML from the file soap.xml; I assume you can use this code to work with the data from your SOAP client object?

<?php

  $xml = new SimpleXMLElement('soap.xml', NULL, TRUE);
  $xml->registerXPathNamespace('def', 'http://www.example.com/Integrics/Enswitch/API');
  $numbers_response = $xml->xpath('/soap:Envelope/soap:Body/def:get_numbersResponse/*');

  while (list($i, $node) = each($numbers_response)) {
    print("\n");
    printf("%d: %s\n", $i, $node->getName());
    printf("    %s\n", $node->display);
  }
?>

output

0: s-gensym3
    12125550432

1: s-gensym5
    12125550458 TEST FOR COLLECT CALL DISABLING