Need A Push In The Right Direction - Yahoo REST Web Services

Posted: 06 May 2007 06:33 PM

[ Ignore ]

Summer Student

Total Posts: 24

Joined 04-14-2007

Greetings,

I want to play with some of Yahoo’s web services, such as their local web services:
http://developer.yahoo.com/search/local/V1/localSearch.html

...so i’m currently reading their “newbie” page where they tell you that you can communicate with them via file_get_contents or curl:

http://developer.yahoo.com/php/howto-reqRestPhp.html

My question is there anything (almost like a helper or a class) that I can use with Yahoo’s REST web services? Does anyone know of the best practice for working with something like this (the xml-rpc class would be great, but this is a different format i’m guessing, right?).

Anyways, have pity on a data feed newbie.

Thanks.

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barbazul

Posted: 07 May 2007 08:19 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 1 ]

Lab Assistant

Total Posts: 175

Joined 08-11-2006

There isn’t anything in the core of CI for that. It shouldn’t be hard to implement though.

The only web services libraries are the XML-RPC and XML-RPC Server libraries which in particular I don’t like very much but haven’t really used them on any serious projects.

I suppose CI should start focusing a little more on web services now than the rest of the framework features have really matured a lot since it’s first versions

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dimensionmedia

Posted: 07 May 2007 08:32 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 2 ]

Summer Student

Total Posts: 24

Joined 04-14-2007

That’s what i thought. I can’t find anything similar in the wiki either. I mean, it seems easy enough to do it outside of CI but I wanted the CI-style of doing things.

If this is truly the way i’m going, into unknown CI waters here, then which way would be best you think if i was trying to incorporate this in CI structure - curl or file_get_contents? Anyone have a preference?

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demosthenes

Posted: 07 May 2007 09:07 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 3 ]

Summer Student

Total Posts: 8

Joined 05-03-2007

I have found curl to be one of the fastest methods. You just need to install libcurl.

Here is a down and dirty curl class from

Keith Kurson

http://www.dreamincode.net/code/snippet632.htm

class curl { 
  /*
  * @author Keith Kurson (delusions@gmail.com)
  * @date September 09, 2006
  * @version 1.0
  */
     /*
     * Headers
     */
     var $headers;
     /*
     * User Agent
     */
     var $user_agent;
     /* 
     * Compression 
     */
     var $compression;
     /*
     * Cookie File
     */
     var $cookie_file;
     /* 
     * Proxy Server
     * ip:port
     */
     var $proxy;
     /* 
     * Initiate the class
     */
     function cURL($cookies=TRUE,$cookie='cookies.txt',$compression='gzip',$proxy='') {
           $this->headers[] = "Accept: image/gif, image/x-bitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg";
           $this->headers[] = "Connection: Keep-Alive";
           $this->headers[] = "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
           $this->user_agent = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0)";
           $this->compression=$compression;
           $this->proxy=$proxy;
           $this->cookies=$cookies;
           //if ($this->cookies == TRUE) $this->cookie($cookie); 
     }
     /* 
     * Tests the Cookie File
     */ 
     function cookie($cookie_file) {
          if (file_exists($cookie_file)) {
                $this->cookie_file=$cookie_file;
          } else { 
                @fopen($cookie_file,'w') or $this->error("The cookie file could not be opened. Make sure this directory has the correct permissions");
                $this->cookie_file=$cookie_file;
                fclose($cookie_file);
          }
     }
     /*
     * Runs a GET through cURL
     */
     function get($url,$refer='') {
          $process = curl_init($url);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_REFERER, $refer);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $this->headers);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $this->user_agent);
          if ($this->cookies == TRUE) curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $this->cookie_file);
          if ($this->cookies == TRUE) curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $this->cookie_file);
          curl_setopt($process,CURLOPT_ENCODING , $this->compression);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 30);
          if ($this->proxy) curl_setopt($cUrl, CURLOPT_PROXY, 'proxy_ip:proxy_port');
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
          $return = curl_exec($process);
          curl_close($process);
          return $return;
     }
     /* 
     * Runs a POST through cURL
     */
     function post($url,$data,$refer) {
          $process = curl_init($url);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_REFERER, $refer);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $this->headers);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $this->user_agent);
          if ($this->cookies == TRUE) curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $this->cookie_file);
          if ($this->cookies == TRUE) curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $this->cookie_file);
          if ($this->cookies == TRUE) curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_COOKIE, $this->cookies);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_ENCODING , $this->compression);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 30);
          if ($this->proxy) curl_setopt($cUrl, CURLOPT_PROXY, 'proxy_ip:proxy_port');
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
          curl_setopt($process, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
          $return = curl_exec($process);
          curl_close($process);
          return $return;
     }
     /*
     * Error Output
     */
     function error($error) {
          echo "<center><div style='width:500px;border: 3px solid #FFEEFF; padding: 3px; background-color: #FFDDFF;font-family: verdana; font-size: 10px'><b>cURL Error</b><br>$error</div></center>";
          die;
     }
} 

Its easy to use.

Sample

$curlVars = array($cookies=FALSE,$cookie='',$compression='gzip',$proxy='');
      $this->load->library('curl',$curlVars);

      $postData = array("postfield_one"=>$postfield_one,"postfield_two"=>$postfield_two);
      $url = "http://yoururl.com/controller/";
      $refer ='';
        
      $returnVar = $this->curl->post($url,$postData,$refer); 

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dimensionmedia

Posted: 07 May 2007 09:35 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 4 ]

Summer Student

Total Posts: 24

Joined 04-14-2007

First, i’m honored that you use your first post on me.

Secondly, wow. I got to try this out later today. Thanks for this… now, i assume curl isn’t a memory or resource hog? I plan on someday putting a large website together for a client that might want to use feeds and such like Yahoo…

Thanks again. If anyone has anymore feedback/thoughts, please… BRING IT ON!

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demosthenes

Posted: 07 May 2007 10:06 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 5 ]

Summer Student

Total Posts: 8

Joined 05-03-2007

Curl is very lite resource wise and very fast.

A helper (function set) that goes well with this is Keith Devans XML library. http://keithdevens.com/software/phpxml

Basically this provides array to xml conversion (XML_serialize) and xml to array conversion (XML_unserialize).

###################################################################################
#
# XML Library, by Keith Devens, version 1.2b
# http://keithdevens.com/software/phpxml
#
# This code is Open Source, released under terms similar to the Artistic License.
# Read the license at http://keithdevens.com/software/license
#
###################################################################################

###################################################################################
# XML_unserialize: takes raw XML as a parameter (a string)
# and returns an equivalent PHP data structure
###################################################################################
function XML_unserialize(&$xml){
    $xml_parser = new XML();
    $data = $xml_parser->parse($xml);
    $xml_parser->destruct();
    return $data;
}
###################################################################################
# XML_serialize: serializes any PHP data structure into XML
# Takes one parameter: the data to serialize. Must be an array.
###################################################################################
function XML_serialize(&$data, $level = 0, $prior_key = NULL){
    if($level == 0){ ob_start(); echo '<?xml version="1.0" ?>',"\n"; }
    reset($data);
    while(list($key, $value) = each($data)){
        if(!strpos($key, ' attr')){ #if it's not an attribute
            #we don't treat attributes by themselves, so for an empty element
            # that has attributes you still need to set the element to NULL

            if(is_array($value) and array_key_exists(0, $value)){
                XML_serialize($value, $level, $key);
            }else{
                $tag = $prior_key ? $prior_key : $key;
                echo str_repeat("\t", $level),'<',$tag;
                if(array_key_exists("$key attr", $data)){ #if there's an attribute for this element
                    while(list($attr_name, $attr_value) = each($data["$key attr"]))
                        echo ' ',$attr_name,'="',htmlspecialchars($attr_value),'"';
                    reset($data["$key attr"]);
                }

                if(is_null($value)) echo " />\n";
                elseif(!is_array($value)) echo '>',htmlspecialchars($value),"</$tag>\n";
                else echo ">\n", XML_serialize($value, $level+1), str_repeat("\t", $level), "</$tag>\n";
            }
        }
    }
    reset($data);
    if($level == 0){ $str = ob_get_contents(); ob_end_clean(); return $str; }
}
###################################################################################
# XML class: utility class to be used with PHP's XML handling functions
###################################################################################
class XML{
    var $parser;   #a reference to the XML parser
    var $document; #the entire XML structure built up so far
    var $parent;   #a pointer to the current parent - the parent will be an array
    var $stack;    #a stack of the most recent parent at each nesting level
    var $last_opened_tag; #keeps track of the last tag opened.

    function XML(){
         $this->parser = xml_parser_create();
        xml_parser_set_option($this->parser, XML_OPTION_CASE_FOLDING, false);
        xml_set_object($this->parser, $this);
        xml_set_element_handler($this->parser, 'open','close');
        xml_set_character_data_handler($this->parser, 'data');
    }
    function destruct(){ xml_parser_free($this->parser); }
    function parse(&$data){
        $this->document = array();
        $this->stack    = array();
        $this->parent   = &$this->document;
        return xml_parse($this->parser, $data, true) ? $this->document : NULL;
    }
    function open(&$parser, $tag, $attributes){
        $this->data = ''; #stores temporary cdata
        $this->last_opened_tag = $tag;
        if(is_array($this->parent) and array_key_exists($tag,$this->parent)){ #if you've seen this tag before
            if(is_array($this->parent[$tag]) and array_key_exists(0,$this->parent[$tag])){ #if the keys are numeric
                #this is the third or later instance of $tag we've come across
                $key = count_numeric_items($this->parent[$tag]);
            }else{
                #this is the second instance of $tag that we've seen. shift around
                if(array_key_exists("$tag attr",$this->parent)){
                    $arr = array('0 attr'=> &$this->parent["$tag attr"], &$this->parent[$tag]);
                    unset($this->parent["$tag attr"]);
                }else{
                    $arr = array(&$this->parent[$tag]);
                }
                $this->parent[$tag] = &$arr;
                $key = 1;
            }
            $this->parent = &$this->parent[$tag];
        }else{
            $key = $tag;
        }
        if($attributes) $this->parent["$key attr"] = $attributes;
        $this->parent  = &$this->parent[$key];
        $this->stack[] = &$this->parent;
    }
    function data(&$parser, $data){
        if($this->last_opened_tag != NULL) #you don't need to store whitespace in between tags
            $this->data .= $data;
    }
    function close(&$parser, $tag){
        if($this->last_opened_tag == $tag){
            $this->parent = $this->data;
            $this->last_opened_tag = NULL;
        }
        array_pop($this->stack);
        if($this->stack) $this->parent = &$this->stack[count($this->stack)-1];
    }
}
function count_numeric_items(&$array){
    return is_array($array) ? count(array_filter(array_keys($array), 'is_numeric')) : 0;
} 

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