It is the only PHP extension that supports a wide range of WS-* specifications. With the framework enabling the use of PHP in SOA implementations, WSO2 WSF/PHP is the ideal extension for integrating PHP legacy systems into enterprise SOA.

Federico notes some of the features of the framework including secure services/clients, binary attachments, automatic WSDL generation and interoperability with .NET and J2EE. You can find more information on the project at its page on the ws02.org site.

The Web services client class, WSClient has two methods for this, getLastRequest() and getLastResponse(). After calling the request() method of the client instance, you can call any of those methods to gain access to the messages.

Simple example code is included showing how to grab that information from the client object. If you're looking for a way to get the WSF/PHP functionality installed on your system, check out this step-by-step tutorial on using the PECL tool to create and install the packages to your PHP setup.

I'd love to give ws02 a fair shake because they have an open source business model. They have a web services framework for PHP which seems interesting from an academic standpoint. But I think WS-* web services are WAY too complicated when compared to REST.

He points at a certain bit of documentation (to show the "simplicity" of it) and gives a personal example of his SOAP experience with the Amazon API as well as mentioning other opinions on the matter.

The framework comes in form of a PHP extension and is available both as source code and as a binary distribution. Additional information exists in form of a manual, an installation guide, and of course release notes.

Key features of the framework include a client API, a server API, MTOM attachments, WS-Security, WS-Reliable messaging, and WSDL generation/consumption. You can get more information about the framework from its project page on the ws02 website.