From the phpblog on the IBM developerWorks website today, there's a quick new tutorial focusing on the use of the Service Component Architecture functionality in PHP to interface with the web service API that eBay offers.

I've just made the first code drop to support calling eBay Web services using the Service Component Architecture. Anyone who's tried calling the eBay soap APIs will know there are quite a few hoops to jump through to get it working. [...] The SCA eBay soap support hides this complexity by allowing you to specify the information as configuration parameters and then it makes sure the right things are placed in the header or the URL.

A code example is included that makes a connection to the web service, calls the GetSearchResults action for the query of "ipod" and, upon getting the results back, loops through them to display them to the page.

In his latest blog post, Adam Trachtenberg looks into the world of web services and comes out with three topics - SOAP, axis2, and SDO. He chooses to focus, though, on the last of these after working with it to really get a feel for what it can do.

n my role as eBay Platform Evangelist, I spend a lot of time exploring different XML technologies. SOAP is obviously the big one. No, it's not PEAR::SOAP or NuSOAP; it's axis2.

He talks a bit about what axis2 is and the need it fills in the web services world. He also talks about how it's been developed (not copied after SOAP, but more of a fresh start that happens to do the same things). After this quick look at axis2, though, he gets into the head of the post - SDO.

The other PHP XML extension I've been hearing a lot about is SDO. SDO is an attempt to provide a standard data interface regardless of the backend datasource. So, for example, you can interact with XML data in the exact same manner as information pulled from your database.

Adam decided to give it a try and see how it interacted with the eBay API with some simple code examples. The first of which looks through eBay Motors and finds the title and mileage for each of the items grabbed. It worked well, and didn't require too much more development than the SOAP predecesor, but there were a few quirks that made things a bit more difficult (like SDO's inability to completely consume a WSDL file and understand a SOAP service's functionality).

It's the book everyone's talking about and the entire PHP community should by! Okay, really, there's a few blog posts about it, but it's definitely not one to pass up if you need a quality recource on using web APIs in PHP - Paul Reinheimer's "Professional Web APIs with PHP: eBay, Google, Paypal, Amazon, FedEx plus Web Feeds".

Chris Shiflett comments on his blog that, though he hasn't read it yet:

I know Paul has been working on it for well over a year, and it has already received a positive review from Nathan Smith.

The review gives praise to the book, noting that it provides good examples and helpful tutorials for each of the APIs talked about. The book covers its subject well without trying to "spread itself too thin" by including too much and not focusing on its core - APIs like eBay, Google, FedEx, Flickr, even the National Weather Service.

Even Paul himself comments on the occasion, mentioning what his intentions for the book were and how it changed along the way.

On the Zend Developer Zone today, Cal Evans shares another interview he did at this year's OSCON in Oregon, this time with Adam Tracthenberg.

Adam is the senior manager of Platform Evangelism at eBay. His job is to communicate to developers all the cool things possible with eBay's web services. We sat for a half-hour to discuss PHP, eBay, where things are and where they are going. Here's what he had to say.

They talk about how Adam got into both PHP and made his way to eBay, a glimpse into the eBay web services API, some talk about Adam's book, and what he sees for the future of PHP and its community.

And, of course, what would an interview be without a "fun" question - Cal asks Adam about his favorite technology right now, but you'll have to check out the interview for the answer to that question.

While it's not strictly PHP related, I know loads of PHP developers out there will be jumping with joy when they go and discover that eBay has opened their API for free use to the entire community.

From this post on Adam Trachtenburg's blog today:

I am extremely happy that today eBay made all of our API calls completely free of charge. You can get 10,000 API calls a month just by signing up, and when you pass a relatively painless evaluation, we'll increase that limit to 1.5 million calls a day. Now that's a call limit you can be proud of.

He mentions that one of the real barriers between customers using the API full was the pricing. So, they decided to drop that wall - and they're even throwing a party to celebrate. And, of course, what would a huge new offering like this be without a contest to go with it - the eBay Developer Challenge...

On the IBM developerWorks site today, they've posted Part 3 of their series "Develop apps with Web services and the eBay SDK", this time, focusing on building it with PHP5.

Create applications in PHP5 that interact with eBay through Web services. Almost half of eBay's transactions occur through its Web services platform. In this tutorial, you'll acquire a solid understanding of the mechanics of the eBay XML API and learn how to use the Services_Ebay PHP extension.

To get up to speed on the project, you might want to check out Part 1 and Part 2 (thought they're not dealing with PHP). You'll also need an understanding of what XML is and how it works to get the most accomplished with the web service. There are ten pages of information here, and they don't skimp on any of the details - there's tons of code and XML examples to get you familiar with the whole process.

To check out the full tutorial, head over here...