HOWTO: Using Arrays in WebServices

Using from ASP.Net based Web Services, or for that matter, even using SOAPFormatter in .Net Remoting is simple. There are two ways to achieve it.

1. If you need an array of data as one of the parameters to the method, you can apply the attributes XmlArrayAttribute and XmlArrayItemAttribute to the parameter configuring the name of the element.

2. If you need to pass a parameter whose type is not primitive, you should again look at the attributes in System.Xml.Serialization namespace on how you can serialize the class in the way that you want it to...

Probably the simplest and the toughest of all three. Toughest because in PHP one has to first generate the WSDL by hand.

On the server side one doesn't need to do anything... can treat any parameter as an array. For the client to be able to work perflectly fine, one needs to generate appropriate WSDL. That's it. An example of the generated WSDL may be (data-type):

  <element name='userNames'>
    <complexType>
      <sequence>
        <element name='name' type='xsd:string'
           minOccurs='1' maxOccurs='unbounded' />
      </sequence>
    </complexType>
  </element>

One good example of how dynamic-structure can be useful in PHP is using PHP to access MapPoint Services.

Again, a very simple implementation though one would need to have a look into the WSDD file.

Looking into the User Guide of Axis, the arrayMapping element can be used to maximize returns.

On the page search for the topic of 'Deploying array mappings - the <arrayMapping> tag'... or just find for the word 'arrayMapping'. I am quoting the example here for completeness:

  <arrayMapping qname='ns:ArrayOfMyDataType' xmlns:ns='uri'
    languageSpecificType='java:f.q.t.MyDataType[]'
    innerType='ns2:MyDataType' xmlns:ns2='uri2'
    encodingStyle='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/' />

f.q.n: stands for fully qualified name.

The reference for the element can be found here.