Consuming popular web services

1
Consuming popular web services

• Amazon, Ebay and Google at your fingertips

2
Who am I

• Michael Dinowitz
• Head of House of Fusion
• Publisher of Fusion Authority
• Founding member of Team Macromedia
• Using ColdFusion since June 1995

3
Evolution

• Web is data formatted for humans
• For humans by humans
• Good for people, bad for software
• Need to transfer data by hand

4
Evolution

• Screen Scraping
• Removing UI and human layer from data
• Complex
• Breaks on any change to UI

5
Evolution

• CFHTTP to get the data
• RegEx to parse it
• sItemREFindNoCase('lta href"http//cgi\.ebay\.com
  /ws/eBayISAPI\.dll\?ViewItemampcategory(0-9)
  ampitem(0-9)gtgt(lt)lt/agt\(\lt)
  lt(a-z3,5-0-9)',
  CFHTTP.FileContent, Start, 1)

6
Next level

• Remove people from the equation
• Content for software by software
• Data in XML over HTTP
• Referred to as REST (Representational State
  Transfer)
• Not complex at all

7
REST

• CFHTTP to get content
• XML functions to parse content
• http//api.search.yahoo.com/WebSearchService/V1/we
  bSearch?appidYahooDemoquerycoldfusionresults2
  0
• Example Code

8
Segue

• PaypalMX Paypal web services
• http//www.web-relevant.com/
• Uses REST multipart REST
• Paypal REST is overly complex
• Soap is cleaner here
• What is SOAP?

9
SOAP

• Simple Object Access Protocol
• Object like access to web services
• Overly complex in ways
• Connects to a WSDL template
• Web Services Description Language
• Still XML, but hidden

10
Basics Connect

• Uses CFINVOKE, CFOBJECT or CreateObject() to
  connect

11
CFINVOKE

• Calls a web service directly
• Uses CFINVOKEARGUMENT to pass arguments
• Returns a single variable
• One method call per invoke

12
CFINVOKE Example

• ltcfinvoke   
• webservice"http//www.xmethods.net/sd/2001/Temper
  atureService.wsdl"   
• method"getTemp"   
• returnvariable"aTemp"gt     
• ltcfinvokeargument name"zipcode" value"55987"gt
• lt/cfinvokegt
• ltcfoutputgtThe temperature is aTemplt/cfoutputgt

13
CreateObject() Example

• Connects to service
• Calls methods separately
• Can invoke multiple methods per connection
• ltcfscriptgt
• ws CreateObject("webservice",
  "http//www.xmethods.net/sd/2001/TemperatureServic
  e.wsdl") xlatstring ws.getTemp(zipcode
  "55987")
• writeoutput("The temperature is " xlatstring)
• lt/cfscriptgt

14
CFOBJECT

• Same as CreateObject() but uses the tag

15
Issues

• Security
• Getting service ID from vendor
• Read the docs!!!!

16
Amazon
17
Google
18
Ebay