Using Amazon Web Services With PHP And SOAP (part 1)

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.

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