Zend Web Services

Zend_Service_Delicious is simple API for using del.icio.us XML and JSON web services. This component gives you read-write access to posts at del.icio.us if you provide credentials. It also allows read-only access to public data of all users.

Zend_Service_Simpy is a lightweight wrapper for the free REST API available for the Simpy social bookmarking service. In order to use Zend_Service_Simpy, you should already have a Simpy account. To get an account, visit the Simpy web site. For more information on the Simpy REST API, refer to the Simpy REST API documentation. The Simpy REST API allows developers to interact with specific aspects of the service that the Simpy web site offers. The sections following will outline the use of Zend_Service_Simpy for each of these areas.

Zend_Service_Audioscrobbler is a simple API for using the Audioscrobbler REST Web Service. The Audioscrobbler Web Service provides access to its database of Users, Artists, Albums, Tracks, Tags, Groups, and Forums. The methods of the Zend_Service_Audioscrobbler class begin with one of these terms. The syntax and namespaces of the Audioscrobbler Web Service are mirrored in Zend_Service_Audioscrobbler.

Zend_Service_Akismet provides a client for the Akismet API. The Akismet service is used to determine if incoming data is potentially spam; it also exposes methods for submitting data as known spam or as false positives (ham). Originally intended to help categorize and identify spam for Wordpress, it can be used for any type of data. Akismet requires an API key for usage. You may get one for signing up for a WordPress.com account. You do not need to activate a blog; simply acquiring the account will provide you with the API key. Additionally, Akismet requires that all requests contain a URL to the resource for which data is being filtered, and, because of Akismet's origins in WordPress, this resource is called the blog url. This value should be passed as the second argument to the constructor, but may be reset at any time using the setBlogUrl() accessor, or overridden by specifying a 'blog' key in the various method calls.

As you most likely know, I have been working with Zend on the Zend Framework for a couple of months now. The bulk on my tasks there have been working on the Zend_Service* set of classes. This includes the Amazon, Flickr and Yahoo! APIs. So, as I'm getting more and more into flickr (see http://flickr.com/dshafik for my photo stream) I have been exploring and I saw a very neat set of images which were composites of 50 random flickr images for a given tag. Well, I liked this enough, I decided that I could do it on-the-fly using PHP, ImageMagick and of course... the Zend Framework.

This tutorial is for developers who want to learn about creating a simple mashup, a Web application that uses information from different sources. It uses the Zend Framework's Zend_Services component and the principle of Representational State Transfer (REST) to demonstrate how to seamlessly include information to extra resources related to our feeds. Using the examples of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Flickr Services, and Yahoo! Search Web services, this tutorial teaches you how to apply the PHP Zend Framework to quickly search those sites for relevant information. You will integrate this functionality into the Chomp feed reader developed in the previous parts of this series.

Zend_Service_Yahoo is a simple API for using many of the Yahoo! REST APIs. Zend_Service_Yahoo allows you to search Yahoo! Web search, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! Images.

Zend_Service_Flickr is a simple API for using the Flickr REST Web Service.

Zend_Service_Amazon is a simple API for using Amazon web services. Zend_Service_Amazon has two APIs: a more traditional one that follows Amazon's own API, and a simpler "Query API" for constructing even complex search queries easily. Zend_Service_Amazon enables developers to retrieve information appearing throughout Amazon.com web sites directly through the Amazon Web Services API. Examples include: Store item information, such as images, descriptions, pricing, and more; Customer and editorial reviews; Similar products and accessories; Amazon.com offers; ListMania lists.

I decided to put together an Akismet class using the Zend Framework (resulting in this being PHP 5 only). For those of you who don't know, Akismet is a web service that you can send comments to and they'll let you know whether or not they think it's spam.