Ben Ramsey on XML, SOAP and Web Services

p. !

p. I’ve only known Ben for a few months but in that short time, I’ve seen him go out of his way to help people. He’s not only a regular in the #phpc IRC channel; he’s also one of the most helpful people there. Between his helpful answers to PHP questions and his witty banter he somehow manages to get his job done.

p. I asked Ben why he was passionate about Web Services.
“I have a strong interest in web services. I’m currently working on a site that consumes several services.” he replied.

p. His passion for writing servers and consumers for web services is apparent any time you are around him. Two of the topics I’ve hear him talk about in channel and will be part of his session at the “Zend/PHPConference and Expo”:http://zendcon06.kbconferences.com/index.php are SOAP and REST.

p. “We’ll talk a lot about SOAP. SOAP has always been difficult for a lot of people to grasp. We will talk about it and show people how simple it is to use SOAP and other web services in PHP5. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a client or a server with PHP 5, because everything you need is built into the language. That makes it very easy to work with.” said Ben.

p. “A few years ago, if someone had asked how to access a SOAP service, my response would have been, “Is there another type of service you can use?” It’s gotten a lot easier recently with PHP 5. Now it’s pretty easy to consume SOAP services.”

p. I made the mistake about asking him about REST. Ben went on for a while, here’s the short version.

p. “I’m really a REST zealot or a RESTafarian. I like REST because the ideas behind REST go beyond just web services. REST is actually two different things. First, it’s an architectural model for the web as a whole. Second, it’s a concept for web services. A REST Web service uses the REST architectural principle, but it’s not about the architecture. It’s about sending a URI in a GET request (that acts as the unique identifier) and getting a response, usually in the form of XML data that you can parse. The REST concept favors nouns or resources over actions or verbs. In the web GET and POST are actions and the URIs are the resources. Most REST calls are GET calls with all the data needed passed in on the query string. There are some that will disagree with me on this but most REST purists agree that you don’t POST a message to a REST service. You call it using a URL and passing in the data in the query string and the service returns its message to you.”

p. That gives you a little of the flavor of what you’ll be hearing if you attend Ben’s “XML & Web Services with PHP (An Overview)” at the upcoming “Zend/PHPConference and Expo”:http://zendcon06.kbconferences.com/index.php. If you want more information on Ben, his blog can be found at “www.benramsey.com”:http://www.benramsey.com and if you haven’t already, you can sign up to attend the “Zend/PHPConference and Expo”:http://zendcon06.kbconferences.com/index.php by clicking on “this link”:http://zendcon06.kbconferences.com/registration_fees.php.

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