My PHP classes for making web mashups
Far too much work has gone into these classes. I’d much rather be working on a real project for a real organization, rather than forcing myself to write PHP. I don’t even like PHP, I just knew it was available on most webhosts… All I wanted to do was make one simple mashup, but the state of PHP code examples and API documentation left a lot to be desired so I ended up making a set of classes that can be used to make a mashup out of any sort of collection.
I’ve tried it with CDs, DVDs, and my favourite songs. I have one more idea, so I may make one more mashup if I have the time and energy. I have a lot of other things I could (should) be doing, but I wanted to get this code out there for others to use. It isn’t necessarily the easiest code to use, I’m no PHP guy, but it does work. It has been tested. Many mashups have been made with it by me and possibly by others. I have support for caching. I use other PHP libraries when it made sense. I even came up with a few fixes for the Last.fm and Amazon Product API code.
I’m still not happy with the Amazon Product API documentation or support forum. It seems something that used to work (fetching preview tracks) is either no longer supported or can’t be done if you have the album. Or at least no one can tell me how to fix my code. There are other sources for preview tracks than Amazon so I just use one of the other APIs my mashup codebase works with:
- Amazon Product Advertising API
- Last.fm
- MusicBrainz
- iTunes Store
- MediaWiki
- Rotten Tomatoes
- IMDB
- Klout
- Topsy
- YouTube
- Flickr
Update
I created a static HTML page with all the information and links to the latest version of my code and all the other codebases I leverage. I’m still in the process of building another mashup, perhaps my best yet, or at least the most informing. I’m waiting to get permission to use TwitLonger’s API… I may have to remove phpBrainz as I didn’t use the GPL license for all my stuff, I don’t really care but decided on the MIT License as it seems simpler. I would like to know if anyone uses all this code and builds anything cool though.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 at 6:30 pm filed under: Cinema, Internet, Music, Self Marketing and tagged: Amazon Product Advertising API, API, CDs, codebase, comma separated values, CSV, DVDs, Facebook, Flickr, IMDB, iTunes Store, Klout, Last.fm, mashup, MediaWiki, MusicBrainz, PHP, Rotten Tomatoes, songs, Topsy, Twitter, YouTube. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
