Posts Tagged 'API's'

Is your site reaching audiences that would probably rather content in their native language? we’ll there’s a simple solution which models itself on the popular social sharing site AddThis. TranslateThis developed by Jon Raasch, a front-end web programmer from Portland, OR is a very easy to implement translation solution that uses the Google Language API and AJAX to translate your page content on the fly.
Why is it good?

It has several advantages over using the Google translate widget the main one being that TranslateThis processes the …

There are some great JavaScript graph libraries out there and one that’s recently come to my attention is Highcharts.com which is compatible with both the jQuery and Mootools frameworks. To get started point your browser here where you can download all the files you need including examples. Highcharts features include slick tooltips to reference points on your charts, it’s compatible with all standard web browsers, the setup for a graph as demonstrated below is simple and uses the JSON data type, there are also …

As the title describes we’re going to look at making cross domain ajax requests using JSONP I’m also going to show you how to get data from a MySQL database and encode it into a JSON string which can be parsed using JavaScript. JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation and essentially its a method which allows us to execute cross domain ajax requests without too much fuss. This post really follows on from my article about scraping content from a page but also allows you …

Google Analytics is great to tracking your site traffic. I started out using Statcounter.com to track my site visits, but over the years i’ve wanted more information so I switched over to using Google Analytics. Google provides an excellent dashboard to monitor and dig into your sites traffic and drill down the information to see exactly what content on your site is popular. For advertising campaigns at MySpace we use a JavaScript technique to track specific clicks on content on a page, with the ability …

“Easy PHP Websites with the Zend Framework” shows you how to use the powerful Zend Framework to build websites with amazing speed and efficiency. Embracing a teaching strategy of learning by doing, showing you how to build website features you’ll actually want to use within your own websites. Among other topics you’ll learn how to manage data submitted through web forms, send e-mail through your website (both text and HTML), manage the user registration, login, and password recovery processes, and even create a simple social …

I want to just start this little post with that fact that I don’t know all the ins and outs of using Memcache but I have enough knowledge to just about get it working. I have access to a Mediatemple Dedicated Virtual Extreme server and managed to install it on the server using SSH, with the help of this little guide from Mediatemple which runs you through the installation process step by step.
Who uses Memcache?
Well Memcache was developed by Danga Interactive to enhance the speed …

API Knowledge
A key tool for any budding web developer is API knowledge. It’s good to familiarise yourself with a variety of application interfaces. I started out using the Twitter REST API with PHP and CURL when twitter first launched the API to basically get a users tweets, pretty simple now I look back, but at the time it was the first time i’d done such a thing. As the development of social media continues this will increasingly open up opportunities to develop more and more …

Learning a new programming language can be daunting to say the least. I’ve recently cracked it when it comes to jQuery. I wouldn’t say Im a pro by any stretch of the imagination but I can successfully build applications. It wasn’t an easy ride learning a new syntax, I’m going to run over a few tips and techniques that i found useful learning both jQuery and PHP.
Take Time To Learn
In order to get into your new programming language you need time and commitment to perfect …

I wrote a post a while back when I purchased my iobridge module which you can use to control switched and sensor. After that post I had my module rigged up in my office at home just monitoring the room temperature and ambient light hourly, I wasn’t sure what i could do with this data at the time so using the Google Ajax API I displayed the data using 2 graphs purely as a bit of fun. Now i’ve decided to take it a stage …

In this tutorial we’re going to take an RSS feed from the top videos page on MySpace and make a widget to display the latest videos using jQuery pagination, ajax and a spot of PHP to parse the feed. The basic logic of what is going on is simple. We parse an XML file echo all the results, then we use the quick paginate plugin to display a select number of results with the option to browse pages.
Lets first take a look at the PHP …

A few months ago i purchased the ioBridge module which allows you to control electronic devices over an internet connection anywhere in the world. I’m intrigued at the collaboration of the internet with real life electronic devices, and being able to write PHP and JavaScript to control and interact with objects in the real world.

The ioBridge module works effortlessly out of the box literally plug it in via Ethernet to your router and your ready to go. The module works by communicating with …

If you type in a URL to a web site in your browser and that URL returns data in a structured format, then a basic API is already in place. For example, when you access an RSS feed, you’re essentially using an API. You type in a structured URL “asking” the server for information in RSS format and the server (usually) spits out structured data ready for your feed reader to parse.
To take this to the next level, you’ll also want to allow developers to …

OAuth allows you to share your private online resources (photos, videos, contact list, bank accounts etc..) stored on one site with another site without having to hand out your username and password. There are many reasons why you should not share your private credentials. Giving your email account password to a social network site so they can look up your friends is the same thing as going to dinner and giving your ATM card and PIN code to the waiter when it’s time to …

I’ve been away for the last week. My wife and I bought a flat in North London and finally moved in on March 16th. So I’m currently without the internet and won’t have it until the end of March which is frustrating when I want to update my blog but simply can’t so please excuse my infrequent posts over the next few weeks.
Here’s a quick piece of code to simply display your feedburner stats on your blog. I’m yet to post my stats publicly on …

Twitters new search feature is great for finding interesting people and topics to follow. So i wrote a script to get search results from twitter and display them on your site. This could be integrated into an existing application or used standalone to follow a particular topic or keyword on twitter,  Check the Demo.

The script uses PHP and CURL to get the twitter search results to display them on the page. for the demo i’ve set an if statement to display results for ‘papermashup.com’ …

Google provides a great set of javascript api’s to interact with its service. The Google service allows you to integrate maps, local search, dynamic feed content, and graphs and charts, into your website or blog. To start using the service you need to sign-up for an api key here, after that the best place to head it the ‘code playground‘ where you can see all the API tools in action. You can easily get the source code and customise the code to fit with your …

Here’s a simple introduction on using the Twitter API. The API offers many different ways to connect to your details including xml, json, atom, and rss. Im going to use xml, php and curl to read an xml file to get my latest followers tweets and display them in the format below.
This method of parsing the xml file requires PHP5 and uses the SimpleXMLElement class.
The Code

$login = "username:password";

$tweets = "http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.xml?count=5";

$tw = curl_init();

curl_setopt($tw, CURLOPT_URL, $tweets);

curl_setopt($tw, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $login);

curl_setopt($tw, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);

$twi = curl_exec($tw);

$tweeters = new SimpleXMLElement($twi);

$latesttweets = count($tweeters);

if …

Over the last few weeks i’ve been looking into various Application interfaces including Vimeos which is fairly easy to get to grips with. Using JSON we can easily get a users profile details and latest videos uploaded on the site.
This is the code that gets the users details. First off we set the variable for the username in this case ‘ashleyford’ which is my account. We then need to set the variables to tell Vimeo which functions to call, and finally setup the urls for …