SOAP PHP Parsing Error?

Question

I'm communicating with a SOAP service created with EJB -- it intermittently fails, and I've found a case where I can reliably reproduce.

I'm getting a funky ass SOAP fault that says "looks like we got not XML," however, when retrieving the last response I get what is listed below (and what looks like valid XML to me).

Any thoughts?

Soap Fault:

object(SoapFault)#2 (9) { 
    ["message:protected"]=>  string(33) "looks like we got no XML document" 
    ["string:private"]=>  string(0) "" 
    ["code:protected"]=>  int(0) 
    ["file:protected"]=>  string(40) "/Users/josh/Sites/blahblahblah/test-update.php" 
    ["line:protected"]=>  int(26) 
    ["trace:private"]=>  array(2) { 
        [0]=>  array(4) { 
            ["function"]=>  string(6) "__call" 
            ["class"]=>  string(10) "SoapClient" 
            ["type"]=>  string(2) "->" 
            ["args"]=>  array(2) { 
                [0]=>  string(24) "UpdateApplicationProfile" 
                [1]=>  array(1) { 
                    [0]=>  array(2) { 
                        ["suid"]=>  string(36) "62eb56ee-45de-4971-9234-54d72bbcd0e4" 
                        ["appid"]=>  string(36) "6be2f269-4ddc-48af-9d47-30b7cf3d0499" 
                    } 
                } 
            } 
        } 
        [1]=>  array(6) { 
            ["file"]=>  string(40) "/Users/josh/Sites/blahblahblah/test-update.php" 
            ["line"]=>  int(26) 
            ["function"]=>  string(24) "UpdateApplicationProfile" 
            ["class"]=>  string(10) "SoapClient" 
            ["type"]=>  string(2) "->" 
            ["args"]=>  array(1) { 
                [0]=>  array(2) { 
                    ["suid"]=>  string(36) "62eb56ee-45de-4971-9234-54d72bbcd0e4" 
                    ["appid"]=>  string(36) "6be2f269-4ddc-48af-9d47-30b7cf3d0499" 
                } 
            } 
        } 
    } 
    ["faultstring"]=>  string(33) "looks like we got no XML document" 
    ["faultcode"]=>  string(6) "Client" 
    ["faultcodens"]=>  string(41) "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" 
}

And the actual raw XML response using client->__getLastResponse():

<env:Envelope xmlns:env='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/'&gt;
    <env:Header> 
    </env:Header>
    <env:Body>
        <ns2:UpdateApplicationProfileResponse xmlns:ns2="blahblahblah">
            <paramname>status</paramname>
            <paramname>location</paramname>
            <paramname>timezone</paramname>
            <paramname>homepage</paramname>
            <paramname>nickname</paramname>
            <paramname>firstName</paramname>
            <paramname>languages</paramname>
            <paramname>color</paramname>
            <paramname>lastName</paramname>
            <paramname>gender</paramname>
            <paramvalue></paramvalue>
            <paramvalue></paramvalue>
            <paramvalue></paramvalue>
            <paramvalue></paramvalue>
            <paramvalue>XXX XXX</paramvalue>
            <paramvalue>XXX</paramvalue>
            <paramvalue></paramvalue>
            <paramvalue>CA0008</paramvalue>
            <paramvalue>XXX</paramvalue>
            <paramvalue></paramvalue>
        </ns2:UpdateApplicationProfileResponse>
    </env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

Answer 1

(No answer for 2 hours ; that's almost a lot, here ^^ So let's give it a try... Maybe it'll help -- or give ideas to other people ? )

Hard to tell, here ; here's a couple of things you might check :

• make sure there is no (absolutly none) white space either at the beginning or the end of the XML/SOAP data
• maybe there could be some error that is echoed to the standard ouput (ie, before/after the SOAP data ? )

What kind of output do you get if you try to call the Webservice's URL from your browser ?
(It would do much, as you won't be using SOAP... But it should say something like "Bad request", at least ? )

Do you get any kind of trace on the server side, that could indicate there's been an error / a problem / whatever might be useful ?

If there is still no way to find anything... Last time I worked with webservices and got errors I could not find why, I ended up using ethereal (now called Wireshark) to "sniff" what was going on on the network... Sometimes helps... But I hate doing that ^^

Anyway... Good luck !
(And forget to say what the problem was and how you solved it, once it's gone ;-) )

Answer 2

Yeah, so the problem has SOMETHING to do with a piece of bad character data or something being passed in one of the paramvalue children. It DOESN'T appear to be visible, or its stripped, even using the trace and __getLastRequest().

I unfortunately don't have direct access to the server code. Its outputted directly from a WS created using EJB -- the developer has no access to the XML itself, so there is no stray whitespace. Doesn't appear to be any whitespace at all -- certainly is no whitespace using __getLastRequest(), though that was a great place to look for the cause of the error, according to comments on the php page for SoapClient.

I solved the problem by basically ignoring the bad call, and "resetting" each of the paramnames and paramvalues, such that I wipe out the bad data...

Anyway, bummer that I didn't explicitly figure out what was causing it, but disaster averted for the moment.

Edit: Solved this since A control character was slipping in to xml returned by the EJB framework. It was supposed to be null, so it used a control character to represent it, and php SOAP barfed because its not "valid" xml. I resolved the problem by writing a manual parse of the response using __getLastRequest() in the case of an exception.