SOAP Servers and Web Services

Retrieving the Exposed Methods

The __getFunctions() method returns an array consisting of all methods exposed by the service referenced by the SoapClient object. The prototype looks like this:

array SoapClient->__getFunctions()

The following example establishes a connection to the boxing quotation SOAP server and retrieves a list of available methods:

<?php
   $ws = http://www.wjgilmore.com/boxing.wsdl;
   $client = new SoapClient($ws);
   var_dump($client->__getFunctions());
?>

This example returns the following (formatted for readability):

array(1) {
   [0]=> string(30) "string getQuote(string $boxer)"
}

One method is exposed,getQuote(), and it requires that you pass in the name of a boxer, returning a string (presumably a quotation).

In the following sections you’ll learn how the boxing quotation SOAP server was created and see it in action.