A newbie XML and HTTP question.

jdtoronto has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Esteemed monks,

I have the enviable task of replacing some PHP code with Perl code. The PHP code was written to submit some XML to a remote server. Here it is:

<?php 
  $XML = "<campaign action=\"6\" />";
  if ($_POST['submit'] == 'view')
  {
    header("Content-type: text/xml");
    echo $XML;
  }
  else
  {
    // Post header
    $VS_header  = "POST /ivrapi.asp HTTP/1.0\r\n";
    $VS_header .= "User-Agent: IVR API\r\n";
    $VS_header .= "Host: api.voiceshot.com\r\n";
    $VS_header .= "Content-Type: text/xml\r\n";
    $VS_header .= "Content-length: ".strlen($XML)."\r\n";
    $VS_header .= "Connection: close\r\n\r\n";
    $stream = fsockopen("api.voiceshot.com", 80);    
    if($stream)
    {
      fputs($stream, $VS_header);
      fputs($stream, $XML);
      $response="";
      $header = "";
      // code for parsing out the returned header
      do $header.=fread($stream,1);
      while (!preg_match('/\r\n\r\n$/',$header));
      // Everything left is the XML response from the API
      while(!feof($stream)) $response .= fgets($stream, 1024);
      fclose($stream);
      header("Content-type: text/xml");
      echo $response;  
    }
  }
?>
[download]

All of this XML stuff is very new to me, but I assumed I could do this as an equivalent:

sub _vs_connectivity_check {
  my $self = shift;
  
  use LWP::UserAgent;
  
  my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
  
  my $req = HTTP::Request->new(POST => 'http://api.voiceshot.com/ivrap
+i.asp');
  $req->content_type("text/xml");
  $req->content( '<campaign action="6">');
  
  my $res = $ua->request($req);
  print $res->as_string;
  
}
[download]

But, by way of exceeding enlightenment I receive this from the server:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private
Connection: close
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 19:27:30 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Content-Length: 87
Content-Type: text/html
Client-Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 19:34:08 GMT
Client-Peer: 64.105.135.234:80
Client-Response-Num: 1
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDACCABCRB=LPAGGBNCGIBHEMOHFDCAAMLJ; path=/

<?xml version="1.0"?><campaign errorid="3" comment="XML file malformed
+ or missing." />
[download]

Which leads me to believe that maybe I have an escaping or encoding issue? Can anybody help me please?

jdtoronto

Comment on A newbie XML and HTTP question. Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: A newbie XML and HTTP question. by bmann (Priest) on Jul 12, 2005 at 20:04 UTC
jdtoronto, The XML submitted by perl is not well-formed, hence the "malformed" error message. It looks to me that all you need to do is close the 'campaign' element, ie `<campaign action="6" />` (note the ' />').	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: A newbie XML and HTTP question. by jdtoronto (Prior) on Jul 12, 2005 at 20:05 UTC
Exactly! I sat here and looked at it again for the umpteenth time in as many hours - and suddenly it dawned on me - now it works perfectly. Thanks!	[reply]
Re^3: A newbie XML and HTTP question. by samtregar (Abbot) on Jul 12, 2005 at 21:44 UTC
xmllint from the libxml2 project is really good for trouble-shooting possibly bad XML. I use it frequently when working on Petal templates which must be well-formed XML. -sam	[reply]