Soap Request Response simplexml_load_string dont work properly

Question

I do a Soap request but I obtain an string imposible to convert to XML, what is the problem?

This is what I do:

$url = "https://test.com/services";

            $XML ='<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
                    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
                    <soap:Body>
                    <Consult Localitation xmlns="Services/">
                    <XMLin>
                    &lt;ConsultXMLin Language=&quot;1&quot; xmlns:xsd=&quot;http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema&quot; xmlns:xsi=&quot;http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance&quot;&gt;
                    &lt;Consult&gt;
                    &lt;Code&gt;XXXXX0700005020128012D&lt;/Code&gt;
                    &lt;/Consult&gt;
                    &lt;/ConsultXMLin&gt;</XMLin>
                    </Consult Localitation></soap:Body>
                    </soap:Envelope>';

                   $ch = curl_init();

                   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
                   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
                   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, FALSE);
                   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FORBID_REUSE, TRUE);
                   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT, TRUE);
                   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
                   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, Array( 'Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8','Content-Length: '.strlen($XML),'SOAPAction: Services'));
                   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
                   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $XML);                   


                   $postResult = curl_exec($ch);

                   $test= simplexml_load_string($postResult);

                  print_r($test); // I obtain nothing.

I obtain this string from the curl response:

 string(1128) "<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?><ConsultaXMLout xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"><Respuestas><DatosIdiomas><DatosEnvios><Datos Idioma="1" Codigo="XXXXX0700005020128012D" Evento="1" web_id="Sin web_id"><Estado>Información sobre su envío no disponible. Compruebe si es correcto.</Estado><Descripcion>La información sobre su envío todavía no está disponible. Por favor, realice su consulta transcurridos unos días.</Descripcion><Fecha /></Datos></DatosEnvios></DatosIdiomas></Respuestas></ConsultaXMLout>" 

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Finally I found the solution.

// String to extract string from.

  string(1128) "<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?><ConsultaXMLout xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"><Respuestas><DatosIdiomas><DatosEnvios><Datos Idioma="1" Codigo="XXXXX0700005020128012D" Evento="1" web_id="Sin web_id"><Estado>Información sobre su envío no disponible. Compruebe si es correcto.</Estado><Descripcion>La información sobre su envío todavía no está disponible. Por favor, realice su consulta transcurridos unos días.</Descripcion><Fecha /></Datos></DatosEnvios></DatosIdiomas></Respuestas></ConsultaXMLout>";

I used htmlspecialchars of the response, then I obtained the full code.

// Call the function.
echo extractString($string, '<XmlIn>', '</Xmlin>'); 

// Here I taked all the code inside these two tags with the function extractString.

// Function that returns the string between two strings.
function extractString($string, $start, $end) {
$string = " ".$string;
$ini = strpos($string, $start);
if ($ini == 0) return "";
$ini += strlen($start);
$len = strpos($string, $end, $ini) - $ini;
return substr($string, $ini, $len);

And this is the function that gets the content between two tags.

I hope that it will be usefull ;)

Answer 2

The problem is that print_r doesn't do well at displaying the output of simplexml parsing. Full credit to @Josh Davis and @hakre, who discuss this at this answer. Try

print_r($test->xpath("//Estado"))

and you should get the contents of the <Estado> tag. See examples from the PHP manual for more ways to retrieve the content.

Answer 3

You're doing a somewhat common (but easy to prevent) mistake in the code: The XML is created "by hand" as writing a string. Even thought this is possible, this is also very error prone.

The XML you provide in your question is with many errors and neither well-formed nor valid. If you want to learn more about these two terms, please see Is there a difference between 'valid xml' and 'well formed xml'? (Sep 2008).

This shows the errors your string produces when loaded into a DOMDocument or a SimpleXMLElement:

#001    <soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
#002                        xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
#003                        <soap:Body>
#004                        <Consult Localitation xmlns="Services/">
[FATAL]                                         ^- (41) Specification mandate value for attribute Localitation (4:41)
[FATAL]                                         ^- (65) attributes construct error (4:41)
[FATAL]                                         ^- (73) Couldn't find end of Start Tag Consult line 4 (4:41)
#005                        <XMLin>
#006                        &lt;ConsultXMLin Language=&quot;1&quot; xmlns:xsd=&quot;http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema&quot; xmlns:xsi=&quot;http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance&quot;&gt;
#007                        &lt;Consult&gt;
#008                        &lt;Code&gt;XXXXX0700005020128012D&lt;/Code&gt;
#009                        &lt;/Consult&gt;
#010                        &lt;/ConsultXMLin&gt;</XMLin>
#011                        </Consult Localitation></soap:Body>
[FATAL]                              ^                        ^- (76) Opening and ending tag mismatch: Envelope line 1 and Body (11:55)
[FATAL]                              ^- (73) expected '>' (11:30)
[FATAL]                              ^- (76) Opening and ending tag mismatch: Body line 3 and Consult (11:30)
#012                        </soap:Envelope>
[FATAL]                     ^- (5) Extra content at the end of the document (12:21)

Instead of creating the SOAP XML via a string, you can make use of existing libraries like SimpleXML or - as this is Soap related - SoapClient.