关于php的肥皂 - 一个试图理解它的初学者

Question

i have read many articles that can be found on soap , i am trying to learn all that i can about it, but none of them make any sense to me. I know the basics of xml and i see alot of xpath being used in the xml examples that are shown on these articles. Do i need to know xpath in order to make sense out of soap?

The reason i want to make sense out of soap is because i have build a custom web app (ecommerce) and i need to display fedex rates during shipout and after looking through fedex the data exchange is through soap. I have tried looking for a php class but they are all outdated since fedex has updated their systems.

I do understand what soap is and how it is used but i cannot find one article that explains in plain english for beginners. If you know of any articles or somehow to help me that would be great.

Answer 1

I have tried looking for a php class but they are all outdated since fedex has updated their systems.

Have you checked FedEx's latest PHP SDK/library? It was upgraded to use the SOAP method long, long ago when they announced they were retiring the old, non-SOAP API. Using it will protect you from the utter insanity that is SOAP itself.

You don't need to know a single thing about XML if the SOAP implementation you use is sane. PHP's built-in SOAP handler is absolutely insane, but in a different way.