During a recent project at work I had to get PHP linked with IBM’s WebSPhere MQ software we have running on another internal server. Our goal was to use our existing web service to take the requests from external vendors and push their XML data back into the queue inside our firewall. Thankfully there’s an extension in PECL that does just that.

Here’s the basic steps I took – hopefully it’ll be useful to someone else out there in the same spot I was. This all assumes you’re working on a web server that doesn’t have an MQ server installed already:

• Get the extension: Head over to the PECL page for mqseries and download the latest version. Unpack it into a directory on your local server
• Get the MQ client libs: You’ll need to go to IBM’s website to download the latest client/libraries for your install (you’ll need an IBM ID to get to the downloads):
  • Go to the IBM page for the MQ client listing
  • Look for the “WebSphere MQ Clients” link under the “Related products and technologies” section and click on it
  • Scroll down to the “Download Package” section and choose from one of the mirror locations
  • Select your package from the list (I went with “Linux for System x86” for our setup)
  • Click on the download link and fill out some required information (you didn’t think you were getting off that easy, did you?)
  • Agree to the terms and conditions and you’ll get a “Download Now” link
  • Drop the archive file (tar, tar.gz, etc) into your server and unpack into a temporary directory (mine had an issue unpacking into the local directory, not a subdirectory)
• Install the package(s): Once you have the IBM software extracted, you should have a series of packages. You’ll need to install the “MQSeriesSDK” to get the right libraries in place to compile the PHP extension
• Build the mqseries extension: Go into the mqseries directory and run “phpize”, “./configure” and “make” to create the .so file. The process should drop it into the default extensions directory.
• If needed, move it: Be sure that the shared module for the extension is in the right directory for the PHP install to find it. (You can make a phpinfo() page if you’re not sure where that is.)
• Update your php.ini: Add in a line to include the extension in your current setup. Remember, after any changes to the php.ini, you need to restart the web server.

Now for the fun part – if everything’s working and the extension shows up in your phpinfo() as active, give this script a shot and see if you can connect to your MQ server:

[php]
$mq_host_ip =’127.0.0.1′;
$queue_name = ‘HOST.REMOTE.Q’;
$mq_server = ‘WBRK_QM_U49’;
$mqcno = array(
‘Version’ => MQSERIES_MQCNO_VERSION_2,
‘Options’ => MQSERIES_MQCNO_STANDARD_BINDING,
‘MQCD’ => array(
‘ChannelName’ => ‘CLIENT.CHANNEL’,
‘ConnectionName’ => $mq_host_ip,
‘TransportType’ => MQSERIES_MQXPT_TCP
)
);

// Connect to the MQ server
mqseries_connx($mq_server,$mqcno,$conn,$comp_code,$reason);
if ($comp_code !== MQSERIES_MQCC_OK) {
trigger_error(‘Cannot open connection to server: ‘.$mq_server,E_USER_ERROR);
}else{
echo ‘Connection good!’;
}
[/php]

Obviously you’ll need to adjust the settings to fit your server, but at least this gives you a start.