Magento 2. Make soap response as array

Question

I'm implementing custom API for Magento 2. My client want the response to be as associative array. Here is my class method:

class Gcapiapi implements GcapiapiInterface
{
     /**
       * Returns greeting message to user
       *
       * @param string[] $products
       * @return array
       */

       public function list($products  = NULL)
       {
          $result = array();
          $stockItems = ...
          ...
          foreach($stockItems as $stockItem){
             $itemData = array('product_id' => $product->getId(), 'sku' => $productSku, 'qty' => $stockItem->getQty(), 'is_in_stock' => $stockItem->getIsInStock());
             $result[] = $itemData;
          }
          return $result;
       }
}

Here is interface declaration:

interface GcapiapiInterface
{
   /**
   * Returns greeting message to user
   *
   * @param string[] $products
   * @return array
   */
    public function list($products = NULL);

}

I've added logs and I see that my method list executing. But in response I'm getting 500 error. In exception.log I see the error:

Message: Class "array" does not exist. Please note that namespace must be specified.

I want to get the following response:

array (size=2)
0 => 
array (size=4)
  'product_id' => string '3708' (length=4)
  'sku' => string 'W3L2221LDCB2' (length=12)
  'qty' => string '228.0000' (length=8)
  'is_in_stock' => string '1' (length=1)
1 => 
array (size=4)
  'product_id' => string '3709' (length=4)
  'sku' => string 'W7L1226E5C96' (length=12)
  'qty' => string '23.0000' (length=7)
  'is_in_stock' => string '1' (length=1)

Can I get SOAP response as associative array somehow? Thanks,

Answer 1

Rewrite your class as:

class Gcapiapi implements GcapiapiInterface
{
     /**
       * Returns greeting message to user
       *
       * @param string[] $products
       * @return mixed[]
       */

       public function list($products  = NULL)
       {
          $result = array();
          $stockItems = ...
          ...
          foreach($stockItems as $stockItem){
             $itemData = array('product_id' => $product->getId(), 'sku' => $productSku, 'qty' => $stockItem->getQty(), 'is_in_stock' => $stockItem->getIsInStock());
             $result[] = $itemData;
          }
          return $result;
       }
}

You can see the change in return type: array -> mixed[]
It's strongly advised to use Data interface in such cases even though mixed[] will work for you.

Answer 2

Once you've received the response from Magento, you can use the following snippet to convert the SOAP object into a PHP associative array:

<?php

$response = simplexml_load_string($soapResponse->any);
$response = json_decode(json_encode($response), true);

Assuming that $soapResponse->any has this content:

<data count="1" count_available="1">
    <row id="1">
        <sku>1830DMG</sku>
        <price>74.06</price>
        <stockid>519745</stockid>
    </row>
</data>

You'll get an array which looks like this:

$ php -f apitest3.php
array(2) {
    ["@attributes"]=>
  array(2) {
        ["count"]=>
    string(1) "1"
        ["count_available"]=>
    string(1) "1"
  }
  ["row"]=>
  array(4) {
        ["@attributes"]=>
    array(1) {
            ["id"]=>
      string(1) "1"
    }
    ["sku"]=>
    string(7) "1830DMG"
        ["price"]=>
    string(5) "74.06"
        ["stockid"]=>
    string(6) "519745"
  }
}