Hey All,


After far too many late nights, slushy runs, and frantic emails to non-responsive API support teams, it's finally out, in theory at least. My parents have a copy, my grandparents have a copy, my aunt has a copy, my friends have copies, I don't have one yet!


I am of course referring to my book, Professional Web APIs with PHP. The book started with grand and somewhat misguided intentions. Sitting around in a New York coffee shop, I first pondered the current state of API specific books, there was a bunch on the market already, by and large they were aimed at specific APIs, the Google API, the Amazon API, eBay, PayPal, etc. That was all well and good, however as a PHP developer buying one of those books pretty much guaranteed that you were going to need to throw over half of it away, since it covered the same API calls in several to many different languages.


My book was going to be different, it was going to demonstrate several different APIs all in PHP! That way when you were at the book store examining your options, you could either pick one that showed you how to use one API in 5 languages, or you could pick up my book that showed you how to use 5 different APIs all in PHP, the choice would be easy!


I also somehow envisioned that I would create a grand toolbox of different copy paste solutions for every API out there; you would buy the book, find the right one, and drop it into your application. This approach has several problems: Drag and drop code is never that easy, it always needs to be tweaked, refactored or re-written, Developing drag and drop code makes assumptions about your audience, and finally you end up writing a lot of code not centric to the topic at hand.


As the book progressed I discovered the problems with my original plan, and discovered something about the APIs I was working with. Every time I approached a new API I was spending %80 of my time trying just trying to make the first call or two. Once those were out of the way subsequent calls were fast, and in many cases almost trivial to write. So I slowly refactored my book into a tool to help developers get through those first few difficult calls (including information on development sandboxes, signing up, etc. etc.), this ways developers could really hit the ground running when it came to any new API.


My book isn’t perfect, deadlines pretty much ensure that they stay that way. I didn’t get to cover some of the APIs that were released after I started (Google released two or three after I started including Google maps), there’s probably typos, but I really hope all the code works out of the box. I decided to use NuSOAP rather than PHP5’s built in SOAP support, and I’m expecting to get slammed for that in some courts, I chose to use NuSOAP because it works with both PHP 4 & PHP 5.


I learned a lot writing the book, and I hope you learn even more reading it.

paul

Well, If you haven't figgured it out by now, my book is out!


Now it's time for you to help, a couple ways you can help me out!


1. Buy a copy... Or three! They make great gifts!

2. If you've got a website give me some linking love! You can link to a post I'm going to make shortly plugging my book, or if you're so willing, put a link directly to Amazon:

<center><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=preinheimerco-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0764589547&nou=1&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=ffffff&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe></center>


Note that if you use one of my Amazon links, Amazon sends a little extra love my way.

3. Tell your friends! Please!




Thanks

Paul