NAME

WebService::Simple - Simple Interface To Web Services APIs

SYNOPSIS

use WebService::Simple;

# Simple use case
my $flickr = WebService::Simple->new(
  base_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/",
  param    => { api_key => "your_api_key", }
);

# send GET request to 
# http://api.flickr.com/service/rest/?api_key=your_api_key&method=flickr.test.echo&name=value
$flickr->get( { method => "flickr.test.echo", name => "value" } );

# send GET request to 
# http://api.flickr.com/service/rest/extra/path?api_key=your_api_key&method=flickr.test.echo&name=value
$flickr->get( "extra/path",
  { method => "flickr.test.echo", name => "value" });

DESCRIPTION

WebService::Simple is a simple class to interact with web services.

It's basically an LWP::UserAgent that remembers recurring API URLs and parameters, plus sugar to parse the results.

METHODS

• new(%args)

    my $flickr = WebService::Simple->new(
        base_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/",
        param    => { api_key => "your_api_key", },
        # compression  => 0
        # content_type => 'application/json'
        # croak        => 0
        # debug        => 1
    );
  

  Create and return a new WebService::Simple object. "new" Method requires a base_url of Web Service API.

  By default, the module calls Carp::croak (dies) on unsuccessful HTTP requests. If you want to change this behaviour, set croak to FALSE and get() or post() will return the HTTP::Response object on success and failure, just like the base LWP::UserAgent.

  By default the module will attempt to use HTTP compression if the Compress::Zlib module is available. Pass compress => 0 to ->new() to disable this feature.

  If debug is set, the request URL will be dumped via warn() on get or post method calls .

• get([$extra_path,] $args)

    my $response =
      $flickr->get( { method => "flickr.test.echo", name => "value" } );
  

  Send a GET request, and you can get the WebService::Simple::Response object. If you want to add a path to base URL, use an option parameter.

    my $lingr = WebService::Simple->new(
        base_url => "http://www.lingr.com/",
        param    => { api_key => "your_api_key", format => "xml" }
    );
    my $response = $lingr->get( 'api/session/create', {} );
  

• post($args_ref, @headers)

• post($extra_path, $args_ref, @headers)

• post($extra_path, @headers)

  Send a POST request.

    my $ws = WebService::Simple->new(
        base_url => 'http://example.com/',
        param   =>  { aaa => 'zzz' },
    );
    my $response = $ws->post('api/echo', { hello => 'world'});
  

  By default, POST requests will have Content-Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded. That means, the content of a post request, the message body, is a string of your urlencoded parameters. You can change this by setting a different default value upon construction by passing content_type => 'application/json' to ->new(). Or on a per-request basis by setting the Content-Type header. JSON request encoding is currently the only supported content type for this feature.

    my $ws = WebService::Simple->new(
        base_url => 'http://example.com/',
        param   =>  { aaa => 'zzz' },
    #   content_type => 'application/json', # either here
    );
    my $response = $ws->post('api/echo', { hello => 'world' }, 'Content-Type' => 'application/json'); # or here
  

• request_url($extra_path, $args)

  Return request URL.

• base_url

• basic_params

• cache

  Each request is prepended by an optional cache look-up. If you supply a Cache object to new(), the module will look into the cache first.

    my $cache   = Cache::File->new(
        cache_root      => '/tmp/mycache',
        default_expires => '30 min',
    );
    
    my $flickr = WebService::Simple->new(
        base_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/",
        cache    => $cache,
        param    => { api_key => "your_api_key, }
    );
  

• response_parser

  See PARSERS below.

SUBCLASSING

For better encapsulation, you can create subclass of WebService::Simple to customize the behavior

package WebService::Simple::Flickr;
use base qw(WebService::Simple);
__PACKAGE__->config(
  base_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/",
  upload_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/upload/",
);

sub test_echo
{
  my $self = shift;
  $self->get( { method => "flickr.test.echo", name => "value" } );
}

sub upload
{
  my $self = shift;
  local $self->{base_url} = $self->config->{upload_url};
  $self->post( 
    Content_Type => "form-data",
    Content => { title => "title", description => "...", photo => ... },
  );
}

PARSERS

Web services return their results in various different formats. Or perhaps you require more sophisticated results parsing than what WebService::Simple provides.

WebService::Simple by default uses XML::Simple, but you can easily override that by providing a parser object to the constructor:

my $service = WebService::Simple->new(
  response_parser => AVeryComplexParser->new,
  ...
);
my $response = $service->get( ... );
my $thing = $response->parse_response;

For example. If you want to set XML::Simple options, use WebService::Simple::Parser::XML::Simple including this module:

use WebService::Simple;
use WebService::Simple::Parser::XML::Simple;
use XML::Simple;

my $xs = XML::Simple->new( KeyAttr => [], ForceArray => ['entry'] );
my $service = WebService::Simple->new(
    base_url => "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos",
    param    => { v => 2 },
    response_parser =>
      WebService::Simple::Parser::XML::Simple->new( xs => $xs ),
);

This allows great flexibility in handling different Web Services

REPOSITORY

https://github.com/yusukebe/WebService-Simple

AUTHOR

Yusuke Wada <yusuke@kamawada.com>

Daisuke Maki <daisuke@endeworks.jp>

Matsuno Tokuhiro

Naoki Tomita (tomi-ru)

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See perlartistic.