Closing Time - PHP

The Google Web APIs allow developers to build SOAP-basedapplications driven off Google's unique indexing and searchcapabilities. And since there are now quite a few PHP classes designedfor SOAP transactions over HTTP, integrating the two has never beensimpler. This article explains how.

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By: Harish Kamath, (c) Melonfire

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July 16, 2002

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The methods exposed by the Google Web APIs make it possible to use a number of very cool features - Web search, cached document retrieval, phrase correction - in a simple, transparent and extensible manner. As the examples above demonstrates, PHP, with its powerful SOAP classes, is a natural fit for these APIs, and it opens up some very interesting new possibilities for PHP developers.

In case you'd like to learn more about the topics discussed in this article, take a look at the following links:

The W3C's Web Services section, at http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/

SOAP/XMLP, at http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/

A Gentle Introduction To SOAP, at http://radio.weblogs.com/0101679/stories/2002/03/16/aGentleIntroductionToSoap.html

Other SOAP tutorials, at http://www.w3schools.com/soap/default.asp and http://www.soapuser.com/

The NuSOAP classes, at http://dietrich.ganx4.com/nusoap/

The PEAR SOAP classes, at http://cvs.php.net/cvs.php/pear/SOAP

The PEAR SOAP_Google class, at http://www.sebastian-bergmann.de/?page=google

Finally, it's important to remember that merely understanding the Google Web APIs is not sufficient. You should treat that understanding as the stepping stone to bigger, brighter things. All that limits you is your imagination - so get out there, and start practicing!

Note: All examples in this article have been tested on Linux/i586 with Apache 1.3.24 and PHP 4.2.1. Examples are illustrative only, and are not meant for a production environment. Melonfire provides no warranties or support for the source code described in this article. YMMV!