On the Zend Developer Zone today, there's a tutorial put together by Cal Evans showing how to use the WebThumb API via a PHP 5 script.

It's a simple service on the surface. You hand it a URL, it gives you back a thumbnail of that web site. At first glance you may think..."ok, why?" The answer to that is of course, "it depends".

He gives examples of reasons it would be needed (designers wanting to show off screenshots of a site or a replacement for Alexa's thumbnailing service) and the code that is needed to make things work. The script asks for the three properties the API needs - a URL for the target site, the height of the browser "window" taking the shot, and the width of this same "window".

Cal show examples of the messages sent back and forth and includes the code for the PHP 5 class to make the request along with some sample usage code. The class makes a basic HTTP request to the API with the XML payload and waits for the response - an estimate of the time for the job and the URL that the results can be found at.

On the Zend Developer Zone today, there's a tutorial put together by Cal Evans showing how to use the WebThumb API via a PHP 5 script.

It's a simple service on the surface. You hand it a URL, it gives you back a thumbnail of that web site. At first glance you may think..."ok, why?" The answer to that is of course, "it depends".

He gives examples of reasons it would be needed (designers wanting to show off screenshots of a site or a replacement for Alexa's thumbnailing service) and the code that is needed to make things work. The script asks for the three properties the API needs - a URL for the target site, the height of the browser "window" taking the shot, and the width of this same "window".

Cal show examples of the messages sent back and forth and includes the code for the PHP 5 class to make the request along with some sample usage code. The class makes a basic HTTP request to the API with the XML payload and waits for the response - an estimate of the time for the job and the URL that the results can be found at.

Scott Mattocks, like so many others, has just reciently recieved notification that he's been accepted as a speaker for the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo this fall. He talks more about his speech in his latest post.

My session, "Consusming Web Services with PHP-GTK 2″ will be a look at how to turn a web services API into a desktop application. I only have fifty minutes so it won't be very heavy on implementation details. Instead it will look more at representing different data structures, collecting different types of data and how creating a desktop application can make life easier for the company and the end user.

Scott joins other speakers for this great event, including speakers like Ilia Alshanetsky, Wez Furlong, and Zeev Suraski. Be sure to check back on the Zend site soon to see when Scott and others' talks will be held.

Scott Mattocks, like so many others, has just reciently recieved notification that he's been accepted as a speaker for the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo this fall. He talks more about his speech in his latest post.

My session, "Consusming Web Services with PHP-GTK 2″ will be a look at how to turn a web services API into a desktop application. I only have fifty minutes so it won't be very heavy on implementation details. Instead it will look more at representing different data structures, collecting different types of data and how creating a desktop application can make life easier for the company and the end user.

Scott joins other speakers for this great event, including speakers like Ilia Alshanetsky, Wez Furlong, and Zeev Suraski. Be sure to check back on the Zend site soon to see when Scott and others' talks will be held.

In this latest post on Adam Trachtenburg's blog today, he talks about the (just ended) ApacheCon and mentions his slides along the way.

I got back from jApacheCon last night. I like the show, but the ASF has certainly shifted over the years from programs written in C (httpd, mod_perl, PHP) to programs written in Java (Ant, Axis, Beehive, Cocoon, Geronimo, Jakarta, Struts, etc.). This has caused the show to have an increasingly large amount of Java content.

This has caused the PHP crowd to dub ApacheCon with new names. Chris prefers JApacheCon; Andrei likes JAvacheCon; I want either ApacheCon4J or jApacheCon. However, Day 3 was a nice mix of PHP, Ruby, and Michael’s httpd talks.

His talk, "Consuming Web Services Using PHP 5" and was well recieved by the conference-goers. It looks briefly at REST and SOAP, with a few demos of each and a progression on the SOAP side ending up with his eBay Motors Google Maps mashup. You can get the slides here (PDF).

In this latest post on Adam Trachtenburg's blog today, he talks about the (just ended) ApacheCon and mentions his slides along the way.

I got back from jApacheCon last night. I like the show, but the ASF has certainly shifted over the years from programs written in C (httpd, mod_perl, PHP) to programs written in Java (Ant, Axis, Beehive, Cocoon, Geronimo, Jakarta, Struts, etc.). This has caused the show to have an increasingly large amount of Java content.

This has caused the PHP crowd to dub ApacheCon with new names. Chris prefers JApacheCon; Andrei likes JAvacheCon; I want either ApacheCon4J or jApacheCon. However, Day 3 was a nice mix of PHP, Ruby, and Michael’s httpd talks.

His talk, "Consuming Web Services Using PHP 5" and was well recieved by the conference-goers. It looks briefly at REST and SOAP, with a few demos of each and a progression on the SOAP side ending up with his eBay Motors Google Maps mashup. You can get the slides here (PDF).