PHP Cookbook

12.7. Receiving XML-RPC Requests

Problem

You want to create an XML-RPC server and respond to XML-RPC requests. This allows any XML-RPC-enabled client to ask your server questions and you to reply with data.

Solution

Use PHP’s XML-RPC extension. Here is a PHP version of the Userland XML-RPC demonstration application that returns an ISO 8601 string with the current date and time:

// this is the function exposed as "get_time( )"
function return_time($method, $args) {
   return date('Ymd\THis');
}
  
$server = xmlrpc_server_create( ) or die("Can't create server");
xmlrpc_server_register_method($server, 'return_time', 'get_time') 
    or die("Can't register method.");
  
$request = $GLOBALS['HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA'];
$options = array('output_type' => 'xml', 'version' => 'xmlrpc');

print xmlrpc_server_call_method($server, $request, NULL, $options)
    or die("Can't call method");
  
xmlrpc_server_destroy($server);

Discussion

Since the bundled XML-RPC extension, xmlrpc-epi, is written in C, it processes XML-RPC requests in a speedy and efficient fashion. Add --with-xmlrpc to your configure string to enable this extension during compile time. For more on XML-RPC, see Recipe 12.7.

The Solution begins with a definition of the PHP function to associate with the XML-RPC method. The name of the function is return_time( ) . This is later linked with the get_time( ) XML-RPC method:

function return_time($method, $args) {
   return date('Ymd\THis');
}

The function returns an ISO 8601-formatted string with the current date and ...