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Record SOAP Requests

One-liner: works with SoapClient (or your own subclass) exactly like any other hook — code just needs to be loaded via require/include, same as curl.

On this page: Requirements · Recording a SOAP call · Matching SOAP requests

Requirements​

The soap hook needs ext-soap and ext-xml — see Requirements. If either is missing, constructing the hook throws \BadMethodCallException with a message telling you which extension to install.

Recording a SOAP call​

// soap_client.php — loaded via require, not called from the entry script directly
function greet_via_soap(string $wsdlUrl, string $name): string
{
    $client = new SoapClient($wsdlUrl, ['location' => 'http://api.example.com/soap']);
    return $client->greet($name);
}
// test bootstrap / test method
\VCR\VCR::configure()->setCassettePath(__DIR__ . '/cassettes');
\VCR\VCR::turnOn();
require __DIR__ . '/soap_client.php';

\VCR\VCR::insertCassette('soap_demo');
echo greet_via_soap('http://api.example.com/wsdl', 'php-vcr'); // recorded first run, replayed after
\VCR\VCR::eject();
\VCR\VCR::turnOff();

Interception happens at SoapClient::__doRequest() — right before the SOAP envelope is sent — so any custom logic in a class that extends SoapClient runs unaffected; only the outbound wire call is captured.

📌 Note: SoapClient's WSDL parsing has its own cache (soap.wsdl_cache_enabled, on by default) that's independent of php-vcr. Don't be surprised if a WSDL fetch still "works" with the network down on a subsequent run purely because of that cache — the thing php-vcr actually records and replays is the SOAP operation call itself, confirmed by killing the target server entirely and re-running successfully.

Matching SOAP requests​

The soap_operation matcher distinguishes between different operations sent to the same endpoint (extracted from <SOAP-ENV:Body><operation> in the body) — it returns true (i.e. doesn't block a match) for anything that isn't a SOAP body, so it's safe to leave enabled even in a codebase that mixes SOAP with other HTTP calls.

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