Re: [fw-general] Additional Web Services?

[Davey Shafik]

Personally, I am of the opinion that there are simply far too many web services for us to implement APIs for all of them. The few that we should implement should be: a) Complex to use (the service, not our API!) or extensive b) Commonly used by lots of developers c) Not a moving target - versioning and maturity ensure our code doesn't get out dated. d) Wrappers for multiple similar services They don't need to fulfill all of the above, but pick 3 at least :) Simple/minimal APIs should be handled by either 3rd party packages (and maybe a wiki page that lists them) or by the individual developer using the upcoming Zend_WebService components being written by Matthew and myself. WIth my new REST client, I have this: $technorati = new Zend_Rest_Client('http://api.technorati.com/bloginfo'); $technorati->key($key); $technorati->url('http://pixelated-dreams.com'); $result = $technorati->get(); echo $result->document->result->weblog->author->firstname .' '. $result->document->result->weblog->author->lastname; This is still very much a work in progress. At lunch today I will change it so that the last line is not so ugly (this is because currently a SimpleXML document is returned for non-Zend_Rest_Server services). So, it'll be: echo "$result->firstname $result->lastname"; And no, I'm not making special provisions for Technorati, but you /will/ need to know your API before hand, otherwise the above could result in  "Array Array" ;) Also, I want to note that it does have a "fluent" API, so you can do: $result = $technorati->key($key)->url("http://pixelated-dreams.com")->get(); I say "fluent", because whilst it works technically like a fluent API, its not close to human readable, if the service doesn't work that way (in this case :) I could make this more fluent using something like: $result = $technorati->action('bloginfo')->usingKey($key)->withUrl('http://pixelated-dreams.com')->get(); where the 'using' and 'with' are just prefixes to make it 'read' nicer. They are discarded. This of course causes a problem with what if you have a web service that uses those in their name. So I don't think this is a good idea ;) I guess no matter what you do, unless you use the __ prefix (which only reduces the risk), there is always the potential for clashes between the code API and the Web Service API when using overloading. Such is life. :) - Davey On Sep 21, 2006, at 8:48 AM, Pádraic Brady wrote: Hi, I was considering raising a proposal for adding several additional web services I (at least) will be needing at some point in the future. It would be nice to add them to the Framework if they were acceptable. Suggestions would be: - Exchange Rates (several sources, incl. UN, ECB and FRB) - Technorati API I thought I'd throw these two suggestions out there and see what folk thought about them. If they are deemed worthwhile adding to the Framework I'm willing to put together a proposal for at least one of them. FYI: these are present in some form (even if only alpha) on PEAR. Haven't used PEAR's Exchange Rates implementation but it seems to cover the main sources in a Beta dated last November. Thoughts? Best regards, Pádraic   Pádraic Brady http://blog.quantum-star.com