In the last few years, the utilization of different web services has become very popular with web developers. This growing trend owes a lot to the development of so-called mashup applications, where many of these web services are put to work seamlessly in conjunction, generally using a server-side programming language that is common to all of them. This article, the first in a six-part series, will get you started with using the Yahoo! Developer Framework in PHP 5 to build some useful web services.
However, not all is so easy when it comes to implementing a specific web service, particularly if you’re a PHP programmer who’s taking the first steps into the vast and exciting area of modern web development. Admittedly, building a PHP 5 application that will interact in one form or another with a particular web service won’t always be a painless experience; it can be even more difficult if you don’t feel very inclined to work with data that is served in XML format.
Fortunately, not all is lost when you’re developing PHP 5 applications that will use a determined web service, since there are many frameworks available that will permit you to work with them without having to deal directly with XML. One framework that’s becoming quite popular with many PHP developers is the handy Yahoo! Developer Network, located at http://developer.yahoo.com, which offers plenty of thoroughly-documented APIs that allow you to implement popular web services, such as web and image searches directly on your own web sites, using this powerful friendly server-side scripting language.
Of course, there’s the possibility that you don’t want to do a lot of work understanding how these Yahoo! APIs can be used within the context of PHP-based applications, which is where this series comes in. In its different parts I’ll show you how to implement, with minor hassles, some of the most useful web services offered by Yahoo!, like web, image and video searches, all from inside your PHP 5 scripts.
In this case, it’s not my intention to provide you here with a fully-featured guide on how to use Yahoo!’s Web services with PHP 5, because the best place to go is simply the aforementioned Developer Network. Instead, I’ll offer to you a bunch of code samples that hopefully will assist you in the development of PHP 5 applications that will utilize some of these useful web services.
Now, having introduced the primary goal of this series, it’s time to get rid of the preliminaries and start learning how to utilize the different web search services provided by Yahoo!, by using some simple PHP 5 scripts. Let’s begin this educational journey now!
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