Online Tools for PHP Web Services Developers

You can find an overview of the tools hosted in the PHP Demo Site in this post.

REST Framework for PHP

I have been blogging about WSF/PHP 2.0 being a comprehensive REST framework. Now it is available for you to download.

If you want to design services from scratch, WSF/PHP would be a very good choice, because it provides a natural mapping form design to implementation.

Also, given the fact that this is an extension written in C, it would also provide you with better performance, compared to other REST frameworks purely written in PHP.

RESTful CRUD Data Services Demo

Here is a live demo on RESTful Data Services implemented with WSF/PHP. I wrote a blog about this Demo explaining how you give semantic to the Http Verbs to manipulate (Do CRUD operations on) Resources in RESTful way.

Http Authentication for SOPA Messages in PHP - 2 Minutes Introduction

Yesterday I wrote about authenticating users using Username token which is a more SOA friendly way of doing authentication. Because it is handled in Message level and clearly defined in WS-Security Specification.

But if you want to do Http Basic Authentication you can still use WSF/PHP as your client. Here is a blog How you send Basic Authentication information with your SOAP message in PHP. Note that here authentication is handled in trasport layer. So this approach is only valid if you are using HTTP transport which is the most common transport to use in web services.

Authenticate using Username Token from PHP - 2 Minutes Introduction

Username token is the most simple scenario described in WS-Security specification. It is used to authenticate users from their SOAP request messages.

The blog "Authenticate using Username Token from PHP - 2 Minutes Introduction" give you quick tutorial how you can implement this in PHP using WSF/PHP.

Webinar - Introducing Enterprise Web services with WSO2 WSF/PHP 2.0.0

WSO2 WSF/C product stack lead Selvaratnam Uthaiyashankar is doing a *FREE* Webinar on “Introducing Enterprise Web services with WSO2 WSF/PHP 2.0.0” at 11.00 AM (US Mountain Time) on 23rd September 2008.

You can register from this link. Note that you don't need any registration fees.

Send Binary With Web Services in PHP - 2 Minutes Introduction

If you want to send binary in web services, you have several options. You can use either base64 encoded strings or MTOM, SWA binary optimized protocols. Here is a very quick introduction on how you can implement it in your application.

WSDL2PHP 2 Minutes Introduction

In .Net, Java or C before you developing a web service consumer or a provider you have tools to generate a skeleton code from the WSDL. So you only to concentrate on your business logic as all the WSDL related work is handled by this generated code.

WSDL2PHP is the tool to do the same in PHP. Have a look at this tutorial to learn how to use it in your application.

SOA Way of Writing PHP

Thousands of web developers around the world use PHP to develop their web applications. As SOA emerges, the enterprise world is moving towards web services more than just web applications. But PHP is slow to used in implementing SOA. This blog titled 'SOA Way of Writing PHP' is study of why you should use SOA in your enterprise application and how to implement it in real world.

Integrating PHP CMS systems with other applications

Here are some interesting thoughts on how to integrate PHP CMS system with other enterprise applications.

Video - WSF/PHP in Enterprise Applications

Shankar who is the manager of the WSF Framework projects including WSF/PHP, explaining the Real world use of the WSF/PHP specially in the enterprise space.

Do REST in PHP - PHP RESTful Data Services

Can you do PHP Data Serivces in REST style with WSF/PHP 2.0.0. Yes certainly you can do it.

Check out this demo about 'RESTful School' and see how can map unique urls to each piece of data you have.

Check "Do REST in PHP - PHP RESTful Data Services" for a guideline of the demo.

Simplest Approach to Enterprise Grade Web Services

Are you bored with spending lots of time and money writing web services? Are you bored dealing with complex API's provided by Java and .Net based web services platforms? These are the things that we worry every day when we want to bring our software solutions to the outside world as standard services.

Now we are moving to a new era of Web Services with WSF/PHP as a platform for developing enterprise grade web services with the minimal effort from the programmer. Now lets look at what are tools required to build a enterprise solution using Web Services.

Obviously the first requirement is the ability to create and consume web services. WSF/PHP has this capability in the simplest form possible. You can read more about how to create and consume web services in the online documentation of WSF/PHP. This includes the creating services from WSDL and creating services manually. Also for the client side you have the option of building the client manually as well as using the WSDL.

But creating and consuming web services is only a small part of your overall solution. At the beginning you may think that "who cares about security". But when your application grows I can guarantee you will feel the need for security. But there is nothing to worry as WSF/PHP can cater for all your web services security requirements. As the service writer you don't have to worry about the details of complex WS-Security mechanisms underneath. That is the best part of the story.

If you want more than the delivery guarantees of TCP protocol and want the message level reliability, WSF/PHP can use the WS-ReliableMessaging delivery guarantees.

Also WSF/PHP comes with a nice way to convert all your data to web services very easily. Now you don't have to write services manually to expose your existing data to the world. WSF/PHP Data services can do this for you in very few easy steps.

WSF/PHP comes with two very distinctive features that you won't find in any other web services platform. Enterprise readiness and ease of use are these two distinctive features. So if you want to develop enterprise grade web services with the minimal effort try WSF/PHP and feel the difference.