Using Amazon Web Services With PHP And SOAP (part 1) (
Page 1 of 9 )
It's the coolest store on the Web - and now, its databases are accessible to you. Welcome to Amazon Web Services, an XML-based API that allows you to quickly build an online store that leverages off Amazon.com's massive databases. Find out more, inside.Everyone, but everyone, knows what Amazon.com is - it's the largest (and, for my
money, coolest) online store on the planet, selling everything from baby clothes
to the new Volkswagen Beetle. It's been around since the beginning of the Web
and offers one of the friendliest shopping experiences online, together with
great customer service and a wide variety of discounts.
One of the
reasons for Amazon's dominance in the online shopping space is its creativity -
the store's managers are constantly coming up with innovative new ideas to
simplify and enhance the customer experience. And one of the cooler new ideas to
emerge from Amazon HQ in recent months has been Amazon Web Services, a set of
APIs designed to let users query the complete Amazon database using a series of
SOAP-based remote procedure calls. These Web services allow regular users to
easily create online stores that leverage off Amazon's experience (and huge
product catalog), and to build cutting-edge e-commerce applications quickly and
efficiently.
Now, your favourite language and mine, PHP, has recently
started shipping with support for XML-based remote procedure calls (including
SOAP) over HTTP. This makes PHP ideal for developers looking to integrate Amazon
Web Services into their Web applications. The only problem? Not too many people
know how to do it.
That's where this tutorial comes in. Over the next few
pages, I'll be demonstrating how you can use PHP, in combination with Amazon Web
Services, to add powerful new capabilities to your Web applications. Take a
look.
