phpman > perldoc > SOAP::SOM(3pm)

NAME
    SOAP::SOM - provides access to the values contained in SOAP Response

DESCRIPTION
    Objects from the SOAP::SOM class aren't generally instantiated directly by an application.
    Rather, they are handed back by the deserialization of a message. In other words, developers
    will almost never do this:

        $som = SOAP::SOM->new;

    SOAP::SOM objects are returned by a SOAP::Lite call in a client context. For example:

        my $client = SOAP::Lite
            ->readable(1)
            ->uri($NS)
            ->proxy($HOST)
        $som = $client->someMethod();

METHODS
    new(message)
            $som = SOAP::SOM->new($message_as_xml);

        As said, the need to actually create an object of this class should be very rare. However,
        if the need arises, the syntax must be followed. The single argument to new must be a valid
        XML document the parser will understand as a SOAP response.

    The following group of methods provide general data retrieval from the SOAP::SOM object. The
    model for this is an abbreviated form of XPath. Following this group are methods that are geared
    towards specific retrieval of commonly requested elements.

    match(path)
            $som->match('/Envelope/Body/[1]');

        This method sets the internal pointers within the data structure so that the retrieval
        methods that follow will have access to the desired data. In the example path, the match is
        being made against the method entity, which is the first child tag of the body in a SOAP
        response. The enumeration of container children starts at 1 in this syntax, not 0. The
        returned value is dependent on the context of the call. If the call is made in a boolean
        context (such as "if ($som->match($path))"), the return value is a boolean indicating
        whether the requested path matched at all. Otherwise, an object reference is returned. The
        returned object is also a SOAP::SOM instance but is smaller, containing the subset of the
        document tree matched by the expression.

    valueof(node)
            $res = $som->valueof('[1]');

        When the SOAP::SOM object has matched a path internally with the match method, this method
        allows retrieval of the data within any of the matched nodes. The data comes back as native
        Perl data, not a class instance (see dataof). In a scalar context, this method returns just
        the first element from a matched node set. In an array context, all elements are returned.
        Assuming that the earlier call happens after the earlier call to match, it retrieves the
        result entity from the method response that is contained in $som, as this is the first child
        element in a method-response tag.

    dataof(node)
            $resobj = $som->dataof('[1]');

        Performs the same operation as the earlier valueof method, except that the data is left in
        its SOAP::Data form, rather than being deserialized. This allows full access to all the
        attributes that were serialized along with the data, such as namespace and encoding.

    headerof(node)
            $resobj = $som->headerof('[1]');

        Acts much like dataof, except that it returns an object of the SOAP::Header class (covered
        later in this chapter), rather than SOAP::Data. This is the preferred interface for
        manipulating the header entities in a message.

    namespaceuriof(node)
            $ns = $som->namespaceof('[1]');

        Retrieves the namespace URI that governs the requested node. Note that namespaces are
        inherited, so this method will return the relevant value, even if it derives from a parent
        or other ancestor node.

    The following methods provide more direct access to the message envelope. All these methods
    return some form of a Perl value, most often a hash reference, when called. Context is also
    relevant: in a scalar context only the first matching node is returned, while in an array
    context, all matching nodes are. When called as a static method or as a regular function (such
    as "SOAP::SOM::envelope"), any of the following methods returns the XPath string that is used
    with the match method to retrieve the data.

    root
            $root = $som->root;

        Returns the value of the root element as a hash reference. It behaves exactly as
        "$som-"valueof('/')> does.

    envelope
            $envelope = $som->envelope;

        Retrieves the "Envelope" element of the message, returning it and its data as a hash
        reference. Keys in the hash will be Header and Body (plus any optional elements that may be
        present in a SOAP 1.1 envelope), whose values will be the serialized header and body,
        respectively.

    header
            $header = $som->header;

        Retrieves the header portion of the envelope as a hash reference. All data within it will
        have been deserialized. If the attributes of the header are desired, the static form of the
        method can be combined with match to fetch the header as a SOAP::Data object:

            $header = $som->match(SOAP::SOM::header)->dataof;

    headers
            @hdrs = $som->headers;

        Retrieves the node set of values with deserialized headers from within the Header container.
        This is different from the earlier header method in that it returns the whole header as a
        single structure, and this returns the child elements as an array. In other words, the
        following expressions yield the same data structure:

            $header = ($som->headers)[0];
            $header = $som->valueof(SOAP::SOM::header.'/[1]');

    body
            $body = $som->body;

        Retrieves the message body as a hash reference. The entity tags act as keys, with their
        deserialized content providing the values.

    fault
            if ($som->fault) { die $som->fault->faultstring }

        Acts both as a boolean test whether a fault occurred, and as a way to retrieve the Fault
        entity itself from the message body as a hash reference. If the message contains a fault,
        the next four methods (faultcode, faultstring, faultactor, and faultdetail) may be used to
        retrieve the respective parts of the fault (which are also available on the hash reference
        as keys). If fault in a boolean context is true, the "result", "paramsin", "paramsout", and
        "method" methods all return "undef".

    faultcode
            $code = $som->faultcode;

        Returns the faultcode element of the fault if there is a fault; undef otherwise.

    faultstring
            $string = $som->faultstring;

        Returns the faultstring element of the fault if there is a fault; undef otherwise.

    faultactor
            $actor = $som->faultactor;

        Returns the faultactor element of the fault, if there is a fault and if the actor was
        specified within it. The faultactor element is optional in the serialization of a fault, so
        it may not always be present. This element is usually a string.

    faultdetail
            $detail = $som->faultdetail;

        Returns the content of the detail element of the fault, if there is a fault and if the
        detail element was provided. Note that the name of the element isn't the same as the method,
        due to the possibility for confusion had the method been called simply, detail. As with the
        faultactor element, this isn't always a required component of a fault, so it isn't
        guaranteed to be present. The specification for the detail portion of a fault calls for it
        to contain a series of element tags, so the application may expect a hash reference as a
        return value when detail information is available (and undef otherwise).

    method
            $method = $som->method

        Retrieves the "method" element of the message, as a hash reference. This includes all input
        parameters when called on a request message or all result/output parameters when called on a
        response message. If there is a fault present in the message, it returns undef.

    result
            $value = $som->result;

        Returns the value that is the result of a SOAP response. The value will be already
        deserialized into a native Perl datatype.

    paramsin
            @list = $som->paramsin;

        Retrieves the parameters being passed in on a SOAP request. If called in a scalar context,
        the first parameter is returned. When called in a list context, the full list of all
        parameters is returned. Each parameter is a hash reference, following the established
        structure for such return values.

    paramsout
            @list = $som->paramsout;

        Returns the output parameters from a SOAP response. These are the named parameters that are
        returned in addition to the explicit response entity itself. It shares the same scalar/list
        context behavior as the paramsin method.

    paramsall
            @list = $som->paramsall;

        Returns all parameters from a SOAP response, including the result entity itself, as one
        array.

    parts()
        Return an array of "MIME::Entity"'s if the current payload contains attachments, or returns
        undefined if payload is not MIME multipart.

    is_multipart()
        Returns true if payload is MIME multipart, false otherwise.

EXAMPLES
  ACCESSING ELEMENT VALUES
    Suppose for the following SOAP Envelope:

        <Envelope>
          <Body>
            <fooResponse>
              <bar>abcd</bar>
            </fooResponse>
          </Body>
        </Envelope>

    And suppose you wanted to access the value of the bar element, then use the following code:

        my $soap = SOAP::Lite
            ->uri($SOME_NS)
            ->proxy($SOME_HOST);
        my $som = $soap->foo();
        print $som->valueof('//fooResponse/bar');

  ACCESSING ATTRIBUTE VALUES
    Suppose the following SOAP Envelope:

        <Envelope>
          <Body>
            <c2fResponse>
              <convertedTemp test="foo">98.6</convertedTemp>
            </c2fResponse>
          </Body>
        </Envelope>

    Then to print the attribute 'test' use the following code:

        print "The attribute is: " .
          $som->dataof('//c2fResponse/convertedTemp')->attr->{'test'};

  ITERATING OVER AN ARRAY
    Suppose for the following SOAP Envelope:

        <Envelope>
          <Body>
            <catalog>
              <product>
                <title>Programming Web Service with Perl</title>
                <price>$29.95</price>
              </product>
              <product>
                <title>Perl Cookbook</title>
                <price>$49.95</price>
              </product>
            </catalog>
          </Body>
        </Envelope>

    If the SOAP Envelope returned contained an array, use the following code to iterate over the
    array:

        for my $t ($som->valueof('//catalog/product')) {
          print $t->{title} . " - " . $t->{price} . "\n";
        }

  DETECTING A SOAP FAULT
    A SOAP::SOM object is returned by a SOAP::Lite client regardless of whether the call succeeded
    or not. Therefore, a SOAP Client is responsible for determining if the returned value is a fault
    or not. To do so, use the fault() method which returns 1 if the SOAP::SOM object is a fault and
    0 otherwise.

        my $som = $client->someMethod(@parameters);

        if ($som->fault) {
          print $som->faultdetail;
        } else {
          # do something
        }

  PARSING ARRAYS OF ARRAYS
    The most efficient way To parse and to extract data out of an array containing another array
    encoded in a SOAP::SOM object is the following:

        $xml = <<END_XML;
        <foo>
          <person>
            <foo>123</foo>
            <foo>456</foo>
          </person>
          <person>
            <foo>789</foo>
            <foo>012</foo>
          </person>
        </foo>
        END_XML

        my $som = SOAP::Deserializer->deserialize($xml);
        my $i = 0;
        foreach my $a ($som->dataof("//person/*")) {
            $i++;
            my $j = 0;
            foreach my $b ($som->dataof("//person/[$i]/*")) {
                $j++;
                # do something
            }
        }

SEE ALSO
    SOAP::Data, SOAP::Serializer

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    Special thanks to O'Reilly publishing which has graciously allowed SOAP::Lite to republish and
    redistribute large excerpts from *Programming Web Services with Perl*, mainly the SOAP::Lite
    reference found in Appendix B.

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (C) 2000-2004 Paul Kulchenko. All rights reserved.

    This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
    Perl itself.

AUTHORS
    Paul Kulchenko (paulclinger AT yahoo.com)

    Randy J. Ray (rjray AT blackperl.com)

    Byrne Reese (byrne AT majordojo.com)