Use form to create Xml variable and return results

Ok here is the scenario im trying to create. This will be real basic.
A user will use a form to search. and return results.

The form will have to create a xml variable and submit that to a webservice url and it will return results.

Here are the requirements of the xml variable
Pass the following request XML to the feed URL in the variable called XML.
<FDSRequest>
<username>username</username>
<password>password</password>
<sType>GNMAR</sType>
<detail>1</detail>
<testmode>true</testmode>
<searchParams>
<firstName>John</firstName>
<lastName>Doe</lastName>
<state>FL</state>
</searchParams>
</FDSRequest>

Feed URL -myplace.com/feeds/RDSFeed.cfm
(GET and POST methods accepted)

So far I just have a form with the required fields to be searched.
Can someone help me come up with some code or point me in the right direction.
I would be gladly to pay for your time if you can help me.

 

Though this question is posted in PHP section but you can capture form data in Jquery, then send a AJAX request to the service using JQuery and XML processing can be done using Javascript-DOM.

Here are few links that you can use to implement it using Javascript & Jquery

Create XML - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3191179/generate-xml-document-in-memory-with-javascript

Send AJAX request to web service using the XML that you created - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3099369/jquery-ajax-post-to-web-service

How to manipulate XML in Javascript -

http://www.w3schools.com/dom/default.asp
http://oreilly.com/pub/h/2127

Code (markup):

If you want to do it in PHP itself you should use Curl to send XML request & recieve XML response -
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6337684/php-post-to-rest-web-service

I am assuming that the service is a REST web service since you have not mentioned it explicitly. But the strange part is that it's using XML as a parameter instead of JSON which is standard now days for REST.

Might it be a SOAP service you can use PHP's inbuilt SOAP client - http://www.codingfriends.com/index.php/2010/04/16/soap-client-calling-net-web-service/

SOAP service's request is an XML itself which contains actual request + headers in it.

To create/manipulate XML use simpleXML - W3schools.com/php/php_xml_simplexml.asp

 

So i can get results back from the api webservice when i Submit an xml
How can I create a form that will fill in the blanks in the xml? and I will get new results based on the form input.
Here is my code.

<?php
$request_xml = '
<YourAPI>
<username>username</username>
<password>password</password>
<sType>uyt</sType>
<detail>0</detail>
<testMode>true</testMode>
<debug>true</debug>
<searchParams>
<firstName>robert</firstName>
<lastName>slim</lastName>
<city></city>
<state></state>
<DOB></DOB>
</searchParams>
</YourAPI>';

//Initialize handle and set options
$username = 'username';
$password = 'password';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://www.yourwebservice.com/myapi.cfm');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'xml='.urlencode($request_xml));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $username.':'.$password);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

//Execute the request and also time the transaction
$start = array_sum(explode(' ', microtime()));
$result = curl_exec($ch);
$stop = array_sum(explode(' ', microtime()));
$totalTime = $stop - $start;
//Check for errors
if ( curl_errno($ch) ) {
    $result = 'ERROR -> ' . curl_errno($ch) . ': ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    $returnCode = (int)curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
    switch($returnCode){
        case 200:
            break;
        default:
            $result = 'HTTP ERROR -> ' . $returnCode;
            break;
    }
}
//Close the handle
curl_close($ch);
//Output the results and time
echo 'Total time for request: ' . $totalTime . "\n";
echo $result;

?>

PHP: