Get Clean Anywhere: Your Easy Guide to Using 3-1 Soap!

Okay, so today I decided to tackle something I’ve been putting off for a while – playing around with SOAP web services. I’ve mostly worked with REST APIs, so this felt like a trip back in time, but hey, you never know when you’ll need it, right?

First things first, I needed a plan. I figured the best way to learn was to actually build something. So, I decided to create a super simple SOAP service that would basically just echo back whatever I sent it. Nothing fancy, just a “hello world” type deal.

Getting Started

I dusted off my old WampServer. It’s been ages since I touched that thing, and it felt a little nostalgic.

• The installation process was smooth, select all default setting, just clicking “next” button,and wait for a while.
• Then I try to run a demo * file, just want to see php environment, and it worked!

Create Files

• Okay,I created a folder named “soap” in the “www” directory.
• Then created two files, “*” and “*”, and both of them in the “soap” folder.

The Server Side

I chose PHP because, well, it’s what I’m most comfortable with for quick and dirty projects. I fired up my text editor and started hacking away. I used the built-in SoapServer class in PHP. It seemed pretty straightforward.

I defined a simple class with one function – sayHello – which would just take a string as input and return it. Then, I created a new SoapServer object, passed it a WSDL file (which I had to create – more on that in a bit), and told it to handle requests.

The wsdl file i created the other one “*” in the same directory, to describe web services in XML format.

It look likes this:

<definitions name="MyService"
targetNamespace="some-namespace"
xmlns:soap="*/wsdl/soap/"
xmlns:tns="some-namespace"
xmlns:xsd="*/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns="*/wsdl/">

<message name="sayHelloRequest">
<part name="name" type="xsd:string"/>
</message>
<message name="sayHelloResponse">
<part name="return" type="xsd:string"/>
</message>

<portType name="MyServicePortType">
<operation name="sayHello">
<input message="tns:sayHelloRequest"/>
<output message="tns:sayHelloResponse"/>
</operation>
</portType>

<binding name="MyServiceBinding" type="tns:MyServicePortType">
<soap:binding style="rpc" transport="*/soap/http"/>
<operation name="sayHello">
<soap:operation soapAction="some-namespace#sayHello"/>
<input>
<soap:body use="encoded" namespace="some-namespace"

encodingStyle="*/soap/encoding/"/>
</input>
<output>
<soap:body use="encoded" namespace="some-namespace"
encodingStyle="*/soap/encoding/"/>
</output>

</operation>
</binding>
<service name="MyService">
<port binding="tns:MyServiceBinding" name="MyServicePort">
<soap:address location="your-server-address/*"/>
</port>

</service>
</definitions>

The Client Side

Then for testing, i wrote “*”. I used PHP’s SoapClient. I pointed it to the WSDL file of my service, and then called the sayHello function with a test message. It felt a little clunky compared to making a REST call, but not too bad.

Running the Thing

I started up my server, and run “*”,and try to see results. Boom! It worked! My little client script sent the message, the server echoed it back, and I saw the response printed on my screen. Success!

It was a super basic example, of course, but it gave me a feel for how SOAP works. There’s definitely more to learn – error handling, more complex data types, security, and all that jazz. But for a first attempt, I was pretty happy with how it went. It’s always good to step outside your comfort zone and learn something new, even if it feels a bit old-school.