XML-RPC for PHP

Introduction

Welcome to the homepage of "XML-RPC for PHP". It is a library implementing the XML-RPC protocol, written in PHP. It is also known as PHPXMLRPC.
It is designed for ease of use, flexibility and completeness. High speed and reduced memory footprint are not the main goals of the project.

XML-RPC is a format devised by Userland Software for achieving remote procedure call via XML using HTTP as the transport. XML-RPC has its own website, http://xmlrpc.com

Note that this is not the library which can be compiled as a PHP extension and has been bundled with PHP from version 4.1 up to version 7.4.
This is also not the same library as the one that is part of PEAR, either. They both share a common ancestry, since the PEAR version is a branch of the original phpxmlrpc library, later independently maintained.

Main Features

Support for creating both xml-rpc clients and servers
Fully automated or fully manual, fine-grained encoding and decoding from PHP values to xml-rpc
Support for UTF8, Latin-1 and ASCII character encodings. With the PHP mbstring extension enabled, even more character sets are supported
Support for http features including compression of both requests and responses, cookies, proxies, basic and digest auth, ntlm auth, https, http2, keepalives (some only with the PHP cURL extension)
Support for `system.listMethods`, `system.methodHelp`, `system.multicall` and `system.getCapabilities` methods
Support for the `<NIL/>` and `<EX:NIL/>` extensions to xml-rpc
Possibility to register existing PHP function or class methods as webservices, extracting value-added information from phpdoc comments, including code-generation capabilities
Optional validation in the server of parameter types of incoming xml-rpc request
Zero dependencies on 3rd party packages
A web based visual debugger is included with the library. It is also available as self-contained Container from https://github.com/gggeek/phpxmlrpc-debugger/
A package emulating the API of the native XML-RPC extension for PHP, built on this library, is available at https://github.com/gggeek/polyfill-xmlrpc
Other cool features are delivered with extra packages, such as an xml-rpc server that automatically generates html documentation of exposed webservices, and a (work-in-progress) jsonrpc library...
Last but not least, a Javascript version of the library is available, which implements the same API, allowing to leverage acquired knowledge to easily build nodejs/browser clients

Requirements

The library has been designed with goals of flexibility and backward compatibility. As such, it supports a wide range of PHP installs. Note that not all features of the lib are available in every configuration.

PHP 5.4.0 or later; 7.4 or later recommended
the PHP "curl" extension is needed if you wish to use HTTPS, HTTP 1.1 or HTTP2 to communicate with remote servers or to use NTLM/Digest authentication
the PHP "mbstring" extension is needed to allow reception of requests/responses in character sets other than ASCII, Latin-1, UTF-8
the PHP "xmlrpc" native extension is not required, but if it is installed, there will be no interference with the operation of this library

Download

For the latest release, check out the Releases page on GitHub.

NB: there are a security-related fixes in releases 4.9.1 and 4.9.2, please upgrade to 4.9.2 or later ASAP!

Ancient releases (older than version 2.2.2) are still available for historical purposes at SourceForge

License

Use of this software is subject to the terms in the license.txt file (BSD License).

News

The latest stable release is version 4.11.0 released on Sep. 7, 2024 (Release notes)

7/1/2023

The user manual has finally been updated to cover modern usage of the library. The PDF version is now available for download from this site. The API docs have been regenerated with more detailed type information.

17/12/2022

the "sister" library `jsxmlrpc`, implementing xml-rpc support in javascript with the same API of phpxmlrpc, is now available as a NodeJS package at https://www.npmjs.com/package/@jsxmlrpc/jsxmlrpc

29/11/2022

the xml-rpc debugger which was historically made available as part of this library, or as an online tool (currently at gggeek.altervista.org), is now also packaged as a Docker Container, making it easier to use by anyone who does not have a PHP installation set up. Available at https://github.com/gggeek/phpxmlrpc-debugger/

Older news (up to December 2021)...

Documentation

User manual

The user manual for version 4 can be viewed online on GitHub or downloaded in pdf format here; it is complemented by automatically generated API docs.
A good way to get started with API usage is to take a look at the demo source code, showcasing both Client and Server use cases.

Manuals for older versions

API changes between version 3 and version 4
User manual for version 3, in HTML or PDF format.
For the adventurous there is even an xml+css version
User manual for version 1.2.1
User manual for version 1.0.99

Release Notes

The description of changes in each release is available as part of the distribution. It is also accessible online.

Changelogs

Detailed changelogs are available on GitHub for all releases starting with 2.2.2.
A changelog for very old versions, before the introduction of git (ie. up to version 2.2.2), is also available online.

Online demo server

A demo server is active at the address https://gggeek.altervista.org/sw/xmlrpc/demo/server/server.php. It exposes functions that can be used for interoperability testing (the full code for the server is included in the Git version of the library).

Online xml-rpc debugger

A demo xml-rpc debugger application, built on top of this library, is active at the address https://gggeek.altervista.org/sw/xmlrpc/debugger/.
You can use the debugger to e.g. query the demo server, or debug your own personal xml-rpc server, if it is accessible on the net.
If your xml-rpc server is not accessible from the internet, we recommend using the Container version of the debugger.

Support

XML-RPC for PHP is offered "as-is" without any warranty or commitment to support. However, informal advice and help is available via the XML-RPC for PHP website and mailing list.

Online Support

Bugs, feature requests and patches can be posted to the project's development website.

Mailing lists

User's mailing list - very low traffic
Developers' mailing list - discontinued on December 2013

Contact

For security related issues feel free to contact ggiunta at users.sourceforge.net

The Jellyfish Book

Together with Simon St.Laurent and Joe Johnston, Edd Dumbill wrote a book on XML-RPC for O'Reilly and Associates on XML-RPC. It features a rather fetching jellyfish on the cover.
Complete details of the book are available from O'Reilly's web site.
Edd is responsible for the chapter on PHP, which includes a worked example of creating a forum server, and hooking it up the (now discontinued) O'Reilly's Meerkat service in order to allow commenting on news stories from around the Web.

If you've benefited from the effort that has been put into writing this software, then please consider buying the book!

PHPXMLRPC or derivative versions are or have been used in many open source projects, including Ampache, Xaraya, Drupal (only up to releases 4.6.2 and 4.5.4), PostNuke, b2evolution, nucleus cms, phpmyfaq, phpPgAds, phpgroupware, egroupware, TikiWiki, Civicspace, MailWatch for MailScanner, WikiTeX and OpenAutonomy.

Acknowledgements

All the contributors listed on Github, plus:

Daniel E. Baumann
James Bercegay
Leon Blackwell
Stephane Bortzmeyer
Daniel Convissor
Geoffrey T. Dairiki
Stefan Esser
James Flemer
Ernst de Haan
Tom Knight
Axel Kollmorgen
Peter Kocks
Daniel Krippner
S. Kuip
A. Lambert
Frederic Lecointre
Dan Libby
Arnaud Limbourg
Miles Lott
Ernest MacDougal Campbell III
Lukasz Mach
Kjartan Mannes
Luca Mariano
Ben Margolin
Nicolay Mausz
Justin Miller
Jan Pfeifer
Giancarlo Pinerolo
Grant Rauscher
Peter Russel
Andres Salomon
Jean-Jacques Sarton
Viliam Simko
Idan Sofer
Douglas Squirrel
Heiko Stübner
Anatoly Techtonik
Tommaso Trani
Eric van der Vlist
Christian Wenz
Jim Winstead
Przemyslaw Wroblewski
Bruno Zanetti Melotti

Page last updated: 2024/9/7