{"id":765,"date":"2009-10-29T08:12:32","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T13:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/?p=765"},"modified":"2017-12-28T03:12:50","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T08:12:50","slug":"product-of-a-restful-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/29\/product-of-a-restful-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Product of a RESTful night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"reading<\/a><\/p>\n

For this week’s homework in Understanding Networks<\/a>, our assignment was as follows:<\/p>\n

REST assignment. Communication in not-so-realtime. Deliver information to the user through the browser from somewhere else. Update the information they’re seeing while they interact, preferably based on input from multiple sources.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I mentioned last week<\/a>, I wanted to work with the newly released Wordnik API<\/a>. I thought it would be fun to have a Web page that would let you RESTfully<\/a> look up a word, for which it would return usage examples from Wordnik. And each word in the examples would be linked to the example set for itself, so you could click through endlessly.<\/p>\n

And then I thought, given my habit of biting off more than I can chew, homeworkwise, that it would be a better plan to just do the minimum amount of programming required for the assignment, and then, if I had time left over after debugging, I could fancy it up. After I had lost (a) an hour’s worth of work to having the folly to trust BBEdit’s clipboard history; (b) at least two more hours to trying to route around what I thought was an authentication issue but that was, in fact, just me-not-understanding-the-example-code issue; and (c) maybe another hour trying to fix a genuine permissions problem, which I gave up on but will have to solve later, finishing even the most basic version of this toy seemed unlikely. I like PHP, though, and I find the documentation reasonably accessible, so I don’t get as discouraged as easily in it as I do with Java. So after a million or so edit-save-refresh cycles, I finally came up with this silly thing: Wordhopper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Wordhopper<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/~ia303\/networks\/wordhopper\/<\/a><\/p>\n

So, if you go to the base URL, you’ll see the current word of the day from Wordnik, followed by a definition and a set of usage examples.<\/p>\n

If you tack a word onto the end of that URL, you get the word and just its usage examples.<\/p>\n

\"Wordhopper<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/~ia303\/networks\/wordhopper\/gastropod<\/a><\/p>\n

And, finally, if you add a \/d to the end of the URL, after your personally chosen word, you get all the available definitions for that word.<\/p>\n

\"Wordhopper<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/~ia303\/networks\/wordhopper\/monster\/d<\/a><\/p>\n

Ta-da.<\/p>\n

The PHP looks like this:<\/p>\n

[PHP]
\n
\n
\n
\n
\nWordhopper – ITPindia<\/title>\n<link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"http:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/~ia303\/networks\/wordhopper\/wordhopper.css\" type=\"text\/css\">\n<\/head><br \/>\n<body><\/p>\n<div id=\"main\">\n<h1>Wordhopper<\/h1>\n<p><?php\n\/\/ Get Wordnik API key\ninclude \"wordnikauth.php\";\n\n\/\/ initialize variables:\n$baseurl = \"http:\/\/api.wordnik.com\/api\/word.xml\/\";\n$word = \"\";\n\n\/\/ Check whether a word has been passed in. If not, we'll pull in the WOTD as a starting point.\n\n\/\/ split the incoming URI string into tokens:\n$tokens = explode(\"\/\", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);\n\n\/\/ if you got four tokens, you've received a word.\nif (count($tokens) > 4) {<br \/>\n\t$word = $tokens[4];<br \/>\n\tif ($word != “”) {<br \/>\n\t\techo “<\/p>\n<h2>Your Word<\/h2>\n<p>“;<br \/>\n\t\techo “<\/p>\n<p>” . $word . “<\/p>\n<p>“;<br \/>\n\t}<br \/>\n}<\/p>\n<p>\/\/ If no word was inserted, look up the word of the day.<br \/>\nif ($word == “” ) {<br \/>\n\t$wotd_request_url = “http:\/\/api.wordnik.com\/api\/wordoftheday.xml?api_key=” . $api_key;<br \/>\n\t$wotdfile = file_get_contents($wotd_request_url);<br \/>\n\t$wotdxmldata = simplexml_load_string($wotdfile);<br \/>\n\t$word = $wotdxmldata->word;<br \/>\n\t$wotddef = $wotdxmldata->definition->text;<br \/>\n\techo “<\/p>\n<h2>Wordnik.com Word of the Day<\/h2>\n<p>“;<br \/>\n\techo “<\/p>\n<p>” . $word . “<\/p>\n<p>“;<br \/>\n\techo ‘<\/p>\n<h3>Definition<\/h3>\n<p>‘;<br \/>\n\techo ‘<\/p>\n<p>‘ . $wotddef . ‘<\/p>\n<p>‘;<br \/>\n}<\/p>\n<p>\/\/ if you got five tokens, you’ve received some other command.<br \/>\nif (count($tokens) > 5) {<br \/>\n\t$details = $tokens[5];<\/p>\n<p>\t\/\/ Does token 5 contain the letter d?<br \/>\n\t$pos = strpos($details, “d”);<br \/>\n\tif ($pos === false) {<br \/>\n\t\t\/\/ It wasn’t a d, so we’ll ignore it for now. Later we may add some other options.<br \/>\n\t} else {<br \/>\n\t\t\/\/ d stands for definition, so let’s look that up.<br \/>\n\t\t$def_request_url = ‘http:\/\/api.wordnik.com\/api\/word.xml\/’ . $word . ‘\/definitions?api_key=’ . $api_key;<br \/>\n\t\t$deffile = file_get_contents($def_request_url);<br \/>\n\t\t$defxmldata = simplexml_load_string($deffile);<br \/>\n\t\techo ‘<\/p>\n<h3>Definitions<\/h3>\n<p>‘;<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\/\/ Display definitions for the word.<br \/>\n\t\tforeach ($defxmldata->definition as $definition) {<br \/>\n\t\t\t$headword = $definition->headword;<br \/>\n\t\t\t$partOfSpeech = $definition->partOfSpeech;<br \/>\n\t\t\t$defTxtSummary = $definition->defTxtSummary;<br \/>\n\t\t\t$defTxtExtended = $definition->defTxtExtended;<br \/>\n\t\t\tif ($headword != $word) {<br \/>\n\t\t\t\techo ‘<\/p>\n<h4>‘ . $headword . ‘<\/h4>\n<p>‘;<br \/>\n\t\t\t}<br \/>\n\t\t\techo ‘<\/p>\n<p class=\"definition\"><span class=\"pos\">‘ . $partOfSpeech . ‘<\/span> ‘ . $defTxtSummary . ‘<br \/>‘ . $defTxtExtended . ‘<\/p>\n<p>‘;<br \/>\n\t\t}<br \/>\n\t}<br \/>\n}<\/p>\n<p>\/\/ Build a request to look up a word’s examples.<br \/>\n$request_url = $baseurl . $word . “\/examples?api_key=” . $api_key;<\/p>\n<p>$file = file_get_contents($request_url);<br \/>\n$xmldata = simplexml_load_string($file);<\/p>\n<p>echo ‘<\/p>\n<h3>Usage Examples<\/h3>\n<p>‘;<\/p>\n<p>\/\/ Display usage examples for the word.<br \/>\nforeach ($xmldata->example as $example) {<br \/>\n\t$quote = $example->display;<br \/>\n\t$source = $example->title;<br \/>\n\t$url = $example->url;<br \/>\n\t$year = $example->year;<br \/>\n\techo ‘<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>‘ . $quote . ‘<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>‘;<br \/>\n\techo ‘<\/p>\n<p class=\"source\">—<a href=\"' . $url . '\">‘ . $source . ‘<\/a>, ‘ . $year . ‘<\/p>\n<p>‘;<br \/>\n}<\/p>\n<p>?>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/body><br \/>\n<\/html><br \/>\n[\/php]<\/p>\n<p>So, I learned a lot from doing this, which was the goal, and I feel more optimistic about finding some way to tie Wordnik data into the <a href=\"http:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/category\/bookalator\/\">Bookalator<\/a>, as the semester rolls on.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: gray; font-size: smaller;\">Photo: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/betsssssy\/466167256\/\">61\/365: I try to read before sleeping every night.<\/a> by Betsssssy \/ Betsy Fletcher; <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/deed.en\">some rights reserved<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For this week’s homework in Understanding Networks, our assignment was as follows: REST assignment. Communication in not-so-realtime. Deliver information to the user through the browser from somewhere else. Update the information they’re seeing while they interact, preferably based on input from multiple sources. As I mentioned last week, I wanted to work with the newly … <a href=\"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/29\/product-of-a-restful-night\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Product of a RESTful night<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4,22],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/reading_in_bed.jpg?fit=500%2C375&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3qY10-cl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":945,"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765\/revisions\/945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}