Wicked Cool PHP

#71: Using Mapping Web Services

At this point, you know how to access a URL and how to parse XML, so now it's time to put the two together. Let's look at the Yahoo! geocoding service as a simple example. The API is a REST service that you can access through GET parameters. Assuming that you have the retrieve_page() function from "#68: Connecting to Other Websites" on #68: Connecting to Other Websites, here's how to get information for a prominent address in Washington, D.C.

$qs = http_build_query(array(
    "appid"     => "YahooDemo",
    "street"    => "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW",
    "city"      => "Washington",
    "state"     => "DC",
    "zip"       => "20006",
));
$page = retrieve_page("http://local.yahooapis.com/MapsService/V1/
geocode?$qs");

Note

Ideally, you want to replace