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@NogDogOct 23.2014 — #The precise details may depend on the API specifics: e.g. if it's SOAP, you could use PHP's SOAPClient extension to interface with it. Otherwise you'll likely use the cURL extension to send/receive the requests and perhaps SimpleXML to parse/evaluate the responses. Chances are good that for Amazon's API there are already some reasonably robust PHP scripts/classes you could use, versus writing all the fiddly bits -- unless you want to use this as a good learning experience. ?@NogDogOct 23.2014 — #The basic flow is:
1. Build the request data (xml, JSON, set of POST fields, or whatever that API requires)
2. Transmit that request via HTTP to the API's URI (e.g. via cURL)
3. Capture the response via HTTP (e.g. cURL)
4. Parse the response, again depending on what sort of data they return (XML, JSON, something else)
5. Base the rest of the application flow by what is in that response
If restful, that mainly just affects step 2, in that you have to tell cURL (or whatever HTTP interface you use) which HTTP method to use to send the request.
Hope that helped a tiny bit.
amazon API call with PHP
hey guys,
new here. For the last few weeks i’ve been focusing on trying to build a website that compiles prices for PC parts across various vendors. The trouble is, i’m somewhat of a PHP noob and don’t quite get how “all of the pieces fit together” yet.
the general idea is that a user submits a search query, and, if i’m understanding correctly, I store that query in a PHP variable to submit into the API call URL (along with whatever other parameters are required). Is this how the call is actually made? From here, the API call returns some XML dataset that I can use to dynamically generate by page HTML (depending on whatever product attributes I want to show).
Am I headed down the right path? Is there anyone who has done this who can offer some help or maybe a resource recommendation?
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@NogDogOct 23.2014 — #The precise details may depend on the API specifics: e.g. if it's SOAP, you could use PHP's SOAPClient extension to interface with it. Otherwise you'll likely use the cURL extension to send/receive the requests and perhaps SimpleXML to parse/evaluate the responses. Chances are good that for Amazon's API there are already some reasonably robust PHP scripts/classes you could use, versus writing all the fiddly bits -- unless you want to use this as a good learning experience. ?0
@NogDogOct 23.2014 — #1. Build the request data (xml, JSON, set of POST fields, or whatever that API requires)
2. Transmit that request via HTTP to the API's URI (e.g. via cURL)
3. Capture the response via HTTP (e.g. cURL)
4. Parse the response, again depending on what sort of data they return (XML, JSON, something else)
5. Base the rest of the application flow by what is in that response
If restful, that mainly just affects step 2, in that you have to tell cURL (or whatever HTTP interface you use) which HTTP method to use to send the request.
Hope that helped a tiny bit.