How to enable SOAP on a LAMP server

originally posted at http://www.goodfeelingplace.com/how-to-enable-soap-on-a-lamp-server
I wanted to use the MSN search API on a VPS (Virtual Private Server) I have setup for a client, but the existing CentOS 5 operating system only had PHP5.1.6 and I needed PHP5.2.1 (at least) with SOAP enabled for the search API to work. So I downloaded all my code files, created a dump of the MySQL database (I had to use mysqldump from the command line for this, as the DB was 147Mb, way over the limit for phpmyadmin to export) and downloaded the db dump. Then I re-imaged the server using the OpenSUSE 10.3 (with plesk) operating system, which I was told would have at least PHP5.2.4 on it by the 1and1 server support person I spoke with.

After the re-imaging process was done (it takes about an hour), I used plesk to easily recreate my accounts, domain, database, and scheduled job. Then I used winscp to upload my gzipped database dump and the code files, logged into the newly created db from the command line through ssh and used the command “source dbdump.sql” from a mysql prompt (and from the same directory as where I gunzipped the dbdump.sql file) to populate the large database in under a minute. I also had to change the ownership of my webroot and everything in it to “default”, since that’s the name of the user I have running my scheduled job which reads and writes to the server. One requirement of running php in safe mode is that scripts can only read and write to files/directories owned by the same user who is running the script. There’s probably a way for me to turn off the PHP safe mode but the workaround was easy so I haven’t messed with it.

Once I got everything put back together I checked the phpinfo page and I was pleased to see that I now had php5.2.6 running. But when I tried using MSN search it still didn’t work, because SOAP wasn’t enabled. Then I did a bunch of searching and found several people in similar situations but I didn’t find any good answers. I tried to update the php configuration using yum and apt-get, but those commands were not on my system. Then I found an RPM file (from http://rpm.pbone.net) that contained a soap.so file in it, but when I tried to install it I got the message “rpmlib(PayloadIsLzma) <= 4.4.2-1”, which I learned was some kind of dependency that wasn’t met by my system. I was starting to get frustrated and the kids were playing kind of loud behind me, so I decided it would be best to take a break and try to feel better about it.

So I turned around and saw all 5 of my kids jumping on the couch. It was our basement couch so I didn’t mind, but I began to feel better and grabbed my camera. I started taking pictures of them and showing them the pictures, which they enjoyed, so we all had a good time. Here’s one with all of them jumping on the couch:

It reminded me of the children’s book, Eight Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. The last page (after they all fall off and bump their head and the doctor says “No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”) has them all on the couch and says “But no one said anything about jumping on the couch!”. So later after putting the children to bed I was feeling better and got an idea.

I remembered reading a post which suggested going to the specific operating system home page to get the appropriate version of the rpm file needed, so I searched for the opensuse home page and found http://software.opensuse.org/search, where I just chose my operating system from the dropdown and searched for soap. Actually they have many operating systems there, including RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, and SLES.

From the results page I just chose the php5-soap rpm for my version of php (5.2.6) and my system (I’m using a 64 bit system so I chose the x86_64 link, I assumed the other link was for 32 bit systems), downloaded it to my PC, then uploaded it to my server, used gunzip to decompress it, and ran the “rpm -i php5-soap-5.2.6-35.6.x86_64.rpm” command to install soap.

This file passed all the dependency checks, then put the soap.so file in the right place on my system, and modified my php.ini file. Then all I had to do was restart the apache service and my LiveSearch sample page (using SOAP to interact with the MSN search engine) worked!

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3 Comments

  1. Web development huh? That’s awesome. I’m adding your blog to my RSS reader. It’s good to see you’re doing well. You should see an email from me soon…

    Chuck

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