Application Programming Interfaces

Web based application programming interfaces (APIs) are nothing new, however since late 2004 many popular new offerings on the web have included public APIs that have increased their awareness and usage on the internet.

The Search Engine Experiment

Over at Webmasterbrain.com they have set up a sort of 'blind taste test' between MSN, Yahoo! and Google where you enter a search term or phrase, and it returns the first three results from each engine. You then have the option of choosing (blindly) the most relevant set of results, which they are tabulating... Read more »

Retrotag Your Weblog - Tagging with the Yahoo! and Tagyu APIs (part 2)

Assuming that you read part 1 of this article, we're going to jump right into action. Update: The downloadable code has been updated to reflect that Tagyu now allows registration. Once you have a username and password, you can hit the Tagyu server as quickly as you want, although you are capped at... Read more »

Retrotag Your Weblog - Tagging with the Yahoo! and Tagyu APIs (part 1)

Part two will be delayed until tomorrow (the 25th), as there seems to be some weird error cropping up for only that post. Strange but true, perhaps in the light of day tomorrow the problem resolves itself :-) Preamble A little twist for this API review. After the last three API posts ran a little... Read more »

Build a Site Search with the MSN Search API

Search APIs The last two articles in this series have looked at the Yahoo! and Google search APIs. The Google and MSN APIs both use SOAP, and the process for acquiring data is quite similar, therefore this instalment will be an overview of using the MSN API, and will look a lot like the Google article. Getting... Read more »

Build a Site Search with the Google Search API

A quick note before getting into the meat of the article. If you happened to make it thru last week's lengthy instalment, you should be well prepared for this article. I'm going to do my best to make this one a bit more concise, so that readers can get to playing with the API. Apologies if it seems that... Read more »

Build a Site Search with Yahoo! Search Web Services

Note: The script available at the end of the article was updated on 2005-11-16 due to a small undefined index. Yahoo! Web Services Yahoo! provides APIs for many of the services that it offers, all housed under the Yahoo! Developer Network. These include Flikr, Maps, Music, Search, Search Marketing,... Read more »

APIs

Background This post forms part of a series on APIs. Read the background on the API series. Application Programming Interfaces For the uninitiated, the term API can be a little daunting, but they need not worry. Lets have a look at Wikipedia: An application programming interface (API) is... Read more »

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SiteUptime Web Site Monitoring Service

Sitepoint's web devlopment books have helped me out on many occasions both for finding a quick solution to a problem but also to level out my knowlegde in weaker areas (JavaScript, I'm looking at you!). I am recommending the following titles from my bookshelf:

The Principles Of Successful Freelancing

I started freelancing by diving in head first and getting on with it. Many years and a lot of experience later I was still able to take away some gems from this book, and there are plenty I wish I had thought of beforehand. If you are new to freelancing and have a lot of questions (or maybe don't know what questions to ask!) do yourself a favor and at least check out the sample chapters.

The Art & Science Of JavaScript

The author line-up for this book says it all. 7 excellent developers show you how to get your JavaScript coding up to speed with 7 chapters of great theory, code and examples. Metaprogramming with JavaScript (chapter 5 from Dan Webb) really helped me iron out some things I was missing about JavaScript. That said each chapter really helped me to develop my JavaScript skills beyond simple Ajax calls and html insertion with libs like JQuery.

The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks

Like the other books listed here, this provides a great reference for the PHP developer looking to have the right answers from the right people at their fingertips. I tend to pull this off the shelf when I need to delve into new territory and usually find a workable solution to keep development moving. This only needs to happen once and you recoup the price of the book in time saved from having to develop the solution or find the right pattern for getting the job done..