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.

EXAMPLE

Example script using Twitter Search API.

use WebService::Simple;
binmode STDOUT, ":utf8";

my $service = WebService::Simple->new(
    base_url        => 'http://search.twitter.com/search.json',
    param           => { locale => 'ja' },
    response_parser => 'JSON'
);

my $res = $service->get( { q => 'perl' } );
my $json = $res->parse_response;
for my $tweet ( @{ $json->{results} } ) {
    print "$tweet->{from_user}: $tweet->{text}\n";
}

METHODS

new(%args)
my $flickr = WebService::Simple->new(
    base_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/",
    param    => { api_key => "your_api_key", },
    # debug    => 1
);

Create and return a new WebService::Simple object. "new" Method requires a base_url of Web Service API. If debug is set, dump a request URL in get or post method.

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

Send 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 = $lingr->get( 'api/session/create', {} );
post([$extra_path,] $args)

Send POST request.

request_url($extra_path, $args)

Return reequest URL.

base_url
basic_params
cache
response_parser

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 webservices

CACHING

You can cache the response of Web Service by using Cache object.

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, }
);

SVN REPOSITORY

http://svn.coderepos.org/share/lang/perl/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.