James Titcumb

SOAP in PHP is quite simple, and as it’s something I’m doing at work at the moment, I thought I’d copy a bit of code to remind myself how to do it. Also to remind myself about the idea Chris had for Private Passwords.

Creating the client:

// WSDL client
$client = new SoapClient($wsdl);
 
// Non-WSDL client
$client = new SoapClient(NULL, array(
					"location" => $endpoint_url . $script_name,
					"uri" => $endpoint_url);

It’s that easy to create the client, and just as easy to make the request itself:

// WSDL client
$result = $client->doSomething("argument");
 
// Non-WSDL client
$result = $client->__soapCall("doSomething", array("argument"));

As this is PHP, and PHP is lovely, the result is an object, and can be accessed as a normal object.

I think largely indents are a matter of opinion. Some people (myself included) use tabs. Others use 4 spaces, others use 2 or 3 or another number of spaces.

I might investigate and see what the “popular” method of indentation is…

Just a quick one - with regards to my post about PHP4 dying, I’ve just seen on PHPDeveloper.org a blog post on the Developer Tutorials Blog about migrating from PHP4 to PHP5 for developers- check it out.

PHP4 for me since starting at Netbasic has been a mere lifeless form of PHP that I used to get into web development. But reading this article reminded me that PHP4 will soon die.

Well, as I said recently, on a day for the PHP community dubbed as “8-8-8″ (referring to 8th August 2008), PHP4 will officially be halted. This means there will be no more development done for PHP4. Any new bugs will remain forever. Any developers still using PHP4 won’t get the support they used to. There won’t even be any security updates to seal up loopholes and hacks.

But on the upside, PHP5 will be the choice. We’re already on PHP 5.2.6 (stable), and the next version is well on the way. Now the article I linked to poses several questions:

• What if in 2 months time, evil hackers will find a bug in PHP4 that is exploitable?
• What if they write a spider that crawls the internet in search for applications that run PHP4?
• What if they target all those sites with malicious code?
• What if indeed there will be no fix for this exploit?
• What are you going to do?

There’s a simple answer to all these questions :- people really need to upgrade to PHP5. It’s really that simple. For developers, I think there’s actually very little to do (the odd thing is listed in the PHP5 Migration Guide). My move from PHP4 to PHP5 was simple and very very pain free (perhaps I was lucky?). Personally, I think it’s the web hosts that need to get their bums in gear. Following my article about Newnet, they’ve actually started using PHP5 for new hosts, and are offering free migrations from PHP4 to the newer PHP5 UNIX servers, so good on them, I fully back Newnet 100% in this descision.

At the end of the day though, a day will come when web hosts really do NEED to upgrade, perhaps because of some horrific bug that will destroy the universe. If I were those web hosts, I’d do it sooner rather than later. But as is the way with some companies - they use the ethos “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I used to think that, but I’ve learnt recently that with some things, even if it ain’t broke, you can make it more secure, work faster and work better.

Thankfully, here at Netbasic, we use PHP5 already, so I’m happy as chips.

So after a little hacking at lunch today, I discovered just why half my websites don’t work. It’s a very simple reason…

PHP4 vs. PHP5.

Yes, Newnet are still stuck in the year 2000, and are using the “favourite old shoes” version 4 of PHP. Please, Newnet, PLEASE upgrade to PHP5. Not for me, but for the sake of your hosting service. Not to mention the fact development for PHP4 actually stopped seven months ago! Not only that but security updates will be stopping in August apparently! Surely that’s two really big reasons to upgrade.

And that goes to every other webhost stuck on PHP4. At least provide two hosting options - one PHP4 for those developers stuck in the year 2000, and a PHP5 option for those developers who are modern and up-to-date.

This article is a good debate.