We are starting a project where we need to post XML data to a third party and then they will send back some real estate information via XML. It has been a while since we worked with web services and I was wondering what people would suggest for the easiest implementation on a simple web service -- NuSOAP, PEAR, or attempt to upgrade to PHP5 and use the built in XML features? Thanks!

I would recommend NuSOAP; in addition, the XML classes at PEAR are quite useful.

If you aren't doing it very frequently, SOAP certainly has its advantages (assuming they have a template for soap to interpret -- which anyone with serious xml services would...).

I used NuSOAP for initial work with Amazon's web services, then it started having problems after they did an upgrade and never quite worked again. It also seemed to have a lot of overhead.

So, I moved on to built-in PHP stuff, and eventually wrote my own HTTP-XML retrieval script (using my own code to read the page, PHP fns to pre-parse the xml). It's very fast, and can 'bend the rules' since the domain of returned data/responses is very well known and by definition must be proper form. ;)

-d

PEAR::SOAP is very nice and I have used it quite a bit in the pass and it has produced excellent results, however the only downside to using PEAR::SOAP is that it still has a few bugs, and bugs may remain for a while due to the developers of the package are not exactly sure as to what direction to take it in IIRC. Many of the bugs are minor, and should not be an issue, therefore I would recommend using PEAR::SOAP

Now, another possiblility you have (assuming you have PHP5), is to use the PHP5 bundled SOAP extension, which is very nice.

I've used NuSOAP on occasion and it's served me well.