[Note: Once again, I received a book from Packt Publishing to review for my blog. This time I review a copy of PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects. The following is my as honest and objective as possible review.]
In the past couple of years, mashups have become the “new thing” when it comes to web development. Not as over-hyped as AJAX and actually useful, mashups take data from multiple sources (usually web sites through their application programming interface–API) and output the merged data into a single distinct application. Not well experienced with accessing API’s and web services, I decided to create my own mashups involving services I currently use as part of moving my web space from just blog to more of a personal/professional site. Having the desire to work with mashups is a big reason I decided to review PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects from Packt Publishing for my blog.
Diving right in this book is aimed at knowledgeable PHP developers familiar with HTML and CSS basics. I would say that the reader should have intermediate PHP skills to be able to understand and follow the example code and application flow of accessing API data.
What I like about this book is that it takes the time needed to explain the various formats, protocols, and web services for accessing data via API’s. As a way to help convey the power, flexibility, and ease of creating mashups, the author provides 5 different mashup project examples. Those projects are: using the Internet UPC database API to find products on Amazon. The second is to create your own search engine with Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search API’s. Third, create your own video jukebox, mashing up YouTube and Last.fm data. The fourth project involves receiving traffic incident updates via SMS. The final project deals with using API’s from Flickr and Google Maps to show photographs based on map location. Each example is thorough, from the overview to instruction on using various methods and protocols to actual coding. I was not very familiar with most of these methods but with the help of the examples I was able gain a better understanding of the technologies and have now even experimented in creating my own mashups with Twitter and Flickr.
I can’t imagine that there is any doubt about the importance of mashups in the future of the web. The idea behind mashups, API’s, and opening up of data is not a trend but a positive shift in thinking of dealing with data. To be viable, web companies now need to offer API, not because it is cool, but because the competition will. This book mentions two companies, MapQuest and Barnes & Noble, that did not and are nearly no longer relevant. And like companies needing to provide access to data and services, developers need to be experienced in dealing with services as well to remain viable. For web developers, in particular front-end developers with below expert level PHP skills (like myself), this book can be a great resource to learning about API’s and web services.
October 30th, 2007 at 9:09 am
[...] Julio Garcia [...]