[Phpwm] SOAP/XMLRPC/ Web services question

[Elliot Smith]

Hello David,

In answer to your specific questions:

David Goodwin wrote:
> Thanks! I'm still not clear on what the difference between them is 
> though. Why REST and not XMLRPC? Do more 'clients' support XMLRPC than 
> REST (or vice versa).
XMLRPC is a relatively simple, constrained protocol. REST is more 
flexible (but less well-defined). Any client which supports HTTP 
supports either, I'd guess. I'd see XML-RPC as a hobbled subset of REST.
>
> From looking at the Zend Framework server/client components, XMLRPC 
> 'seems' better, as :
>
>  - There's no need to have ->get() on the end of function calls.
Maybe in the Zend Framework. From a quick glance, I'd say the ZF REST 
client looks a bit on the clunky side. For me, one major benefit of REST 
is that a web browser is an adequate client (retrieval of data is 
usually a GET plus querystring): it's easier to poke some REST 
interfaces, as they have open URLs on the interface; XML-RPC (correct me 
if I'm wrong) requires a structured method call in the request body. For 
C_UD operations, I'd have a look at the Java REST client 
(http://code.google.com/p/rest-client/).
>  - It supports namespaces...
In the response body? Presumably because you're returning XML documents 
conforming to some schema? Nothing to stop you doing this with a REST 
response body (if you're returning XML). I also like that REST doesn't 
prohibit you returning HTML, JSON etc., while XML-RPC seems to suggest 
XML is your main route :)

Elliot
>
>
> David.
>
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