Sending duplicate XML sections and constructing with an array in PHP

Question

I'm interacting with PHP's SOAP client to send and receive requests to a remote SOAP server and one of the XML documents that I have to send with the request has duplicate sections. By that I mean the XML is like this:

<pSalesInvoiceInput>
    <SalesInvoice>
        <invoice_date>[unknown type: string]</invoice_date>
        <due_date>[unknown type: string]</due_date>
        <notes>[unknown type: string?]</notes>
        <line_data>
            <description></description>
            <net_amount>[unknown type: string]</net_amount>
            <vat_amount>[unknown type: string]</vat_amount>
            <nominal_code>[unknown type: string]</nominal_code>
        </line_data>
        <line_data>
            <description></description>
            <net_amount>[unknown type: string]</net_amount>
            <vat_amount>[unknown type: string]</vat_amount>
            <nominal_code>[unknown type: string]</nominal_code>
        </line_data>
    </SalesInvoice>
</pSalesInvoiceInput>

As you can see, the line_data section is duplicating for each line on the invoice. This presents a problem when I'm building the array to send in the SOAP request as line_data would be the array key, and PHP arrays have to have a unique array key.

For example, I can't do this:

$return = [
    'pSalesInvoiceInput' => [
        'SalesInvoice' => [
            'invoice_date' => $this->invoice_date,
            'due_date' => $this->due_date,
            'notes' => '',
            'line_data => [
                'description' => 'Charge #1',
                'net_amount' => '99.99',
                'vat_amount' => '14.56',
                'nominal_code' => '61'
            ],
            'line_data => [
                'description' => 'Charge #2',
                'net_amount' => '45.99',
                'vat_amount' => '6.56',
                'nominal_code' => '43'
            ],
        ]
    ],
    'pSalesInvoiceOutput' => []
];

Does anyone know a way around this? If at all possible I'd like to keep constructing my request XML with arrays because it's done elsewhere in the codebase that way.

Answer 1

Fixed the issue, turns out the PHP SOAP client has anticipated this and allowed us to do the following:

'line_data' => [
    ['description' => 'Test #1',
    'net_amount' => '50.00',
    'vat_amount' => '10.00',
    'nominal_code' => '6110',
    'glue_house_id' => $this->Houses->id],
    ['description' => 'Test #1',
    'net_amount' => '50.00',
    'vat_amount' => '10.00',
    'nominal_code' => '6110',
    'glue_house_id' => $this->Houses->id]
]

So just supply a multi-dimensional array and the SOAP client will automatically format it correctly.