Reading a SharePoint list with PHP (updated)

Updated (March 4, 2010): Added an example that uses the PHP5 built-in SOAP support instead of the NuSOAP library.

In my previous posts I showed a way to interact with SharePoint’s Lists Web Service through a Java application. Today I’d like to show how to do similar basic tricks with PHP. Once again, toying with SharePoint Web Services from a non-Microsoft language isn’t exactly a walk in the park.

I tried to do some experiments lately: I managed to read a SharePoint Online List from PHP, thanks to the nusoap library and a blog post written by Craige Thomas. As usual, a lot of trouble comes from the consumption of a WSDL that lies behind an NTLM/SSL server (in the case of SharePoint Online anyways). Once again, the easiest way to avoid such problems is to download and parse the WSDL file locally (Lists.asmx). Using basic authentication is the way to go when building a simple lists reading application in PHP, solving the NTLM issue implies too many intricacies in my opinion. If you manage to do it with a simple and straightforward solution, please let me know.

The code sample below will basically display the Lists Web Service request and response (see the screenshot above). Before running the code, you’ll have to set the username, password, and the local path to your Lists WSDL file. The logical next step, if you want to manipulate the results, would be to cast the response into a DOM document and parse it for the information you’re looking for.

<?php

//Requires the NuSOAP library
require_once('lib/nusoap.php');

$username = 'yourLogin';
$password = 'yourPassword';
$rowLimit = '150';

/* A string that contains either the display name or the GUID for the list.
 * It is recommended that you use the GUID, which must be between curly
 * braces ({}).
 */
$listName = "yourSharePointListName";

/* Local path to the Lists.asmx WSDL file (localhost). You must first download
 * it manually from your SharePoint site (which should be available at
 * yoursharepointsite.com/subsite/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx?WSDL)
 */
$wsdl = "http://localhost/phpsp/Lists.wsdl";

//Basic authentication. Using UTF-8 to allow special characters.
$client = new nusoap_client($wsdl, true);
$client->setCredentials($username,$password);
$client->soap_defencoding='UTF-8';

//XML for the request. Add extra fields as necessary
$xml ='
<GetListItems xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">
<listName>'.$listName.'</listName>
<rowLimit>'.$rowLimit.'</rowLimit>
</GetListItems>
';

//Invoke the Web Service
$result = $client->call('GetListItems', $xml);

//Error check
if(isset($fault)) {
  echo("<h2>Error</h2>". $fault);
}

//Extracting and preparing the Web Service response for display
$responseContent = utf8_decode(htmlspecialchars(substr($client->response,strpos($client->response, "<"),strlen($client->response)-1)));

//Displaying the request and the response, broken down by header and XML content
echo "<h2>Request</h2><pre>" . utf8_decode(htmlspecialchars($client->request, ENT_QUOTES)) . "</pre>";
echo "<h2>Response header</h2><pre>" . utf8_decode(htmlspecialchars(substr($client->response,0,strpos($client->response, "<")))) . "</pre>";
echo "<h2>Response content</h2><pre>".$responseContent."</pre>";

//Uncomment for debugging info:
//echo("<h2>Debug</h2><pre>" . htmlspecialchars($client->debug_str, ENT_QUOTES) . "</pre>");
unset($client);
?>

And here’s the faster and cleaner version that uses the PHP5 built-in SOAP support:

<?php

//Authentication details
$authParams = array('login' => 'yourUsername',
					'password' => 'yourPassword');

/* A string that contains either the display name or the GUID for the list.
 * It is recommended that you use the GUID, which must be surrounded by curly
 * braces ({}).
 */
$listName = "TempList";
$rowLimit = '150';

/* Local path to the Lists.asmx WSDL file (localhost). You must first download
 * it manually from your SharePoint site (which should be available at
 * yoursharepointsite.com/subsite/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx?WSDL)
 */
$wsdl = "http://localhost/phpsp/Lists.wsdl";

//Creating the SOAP client and initializing the GetListItems method parameters
$soapClient = new SoapClient($wsdl, $authParams);
$params = array('listName' => $listName,
				'rowLimit' => $rowLimit);

//Calling the GetListItems Web Service
$rawXMLresponse = null;
try{
	$rawXMLresponse = $soapClient->GetListItems($params)->GetListItemsResult->any;
}
catch(SoapFault $fault){
	echo 'Fault code: '.$fault->faultcode;
	echo 'Fault string: '.$fault->faultstring;
}
echo '<pre>' . $rawXMLresponse . '</pre>';

//Loading the XML result into parsable DOM elements
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadXML($rawXMLresponse);
$results = $dom->getElementsByTagNameNS("#RowsetSchema", "*");

//Fetching the elements values. Specify more attributes as necessary
foreach($results as $result){
	echo $result->getAttribute("ows_LinkTitle")."<br/>";
}
unset($soapClient);
?>