NAME

WebService::Simple - Simple Interface To Web Services APIs

SYNOPSIS

  use WebService::Simple;

  # Simple use case
  my $flickr = WebService::Simple->new(
    base_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/",
    param    => { api_key => "your_api_key", }
  );

  # send GET request to 
  # http://api.flickr.com/service/rest/?api_key=your_api_key&method=flickr.test.echo&name=value
  $flickr->get( { method => "flickr.test.echo", name => "value" } );

  # send GET request to 
  # http://api.flickr.com/service/rest/extra/path?api_key=your_api_key&method=flickr.test.echo&name=value
  $flickr->get( "extra/path",
    { method => "flickr.test.echo", name => "value" });

DESCRIPTION

WebService::Simple is a simple class to interact with web services.

It's basically an LWP::UserAgent that remembers recurring API URLs and parameters, plus sugar to parse the results.

METHODS

new(%args)

    my $flickr = WebService::Simple->new(
        base_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/",
        param    => { api_key => "your_api_key", },
        # compression  => 0
        # content_type => 'application/json'
        # croak        => 0
        # debug        => 1
    );

Create and return a new WebService::Simple object. "new" Method requires a base_url of Web Service API.

By default, the module calls Carp::croak (dies) on unsuccessful HTTP requests. If you want to change this behaviour, set croak to FALSE and get() or post() will return the HTTP::Response object on success and failure, just like the base LWP::UserAgent.

By default the module will attempt to use HTTP compression if the Compress::Zlib module is available. Pass compress => 0 to ->new() to disable this feature.

If debug is set, the request URL will be dumped via warn() on get or post method calls .

get([$extra_path,] $args)

    my $response =
      $flickr->get( { method => "flickr.test.echo", name => "value" } );

Send a GET request, and you can get the WebService::Simple::Response object. If you want to add a path to base URL, use an option parameter.

    my $lingr = WebService::Simple->new(
        base_url => "http://www.lingr.com/",
        param    => { api_key => "your_api_key", format => "xml" }
    );
    my $response = $lingr->get( 'api/session/create', {} );

post($args_ref, @headers)

post($extra_path, $args_ref, @headers)

post($extra_path, @headers)

Send a POST request.

    my $ws = WebService::Simple->new(
        base_url => 'http://example.com/',
        param   =>  { aaa => 'zzz' },
    );
    my $response = $ws->post('api/echo', { hello => 'world'});

By default, POST requests will have Content-Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded. That means, the content of a post request, the message body, is a string of your urlencoded parameters. You can change this by setting a different default value upon construction by passing content_type => 'application/json' to ->new(). Or on a per-request basis by setting the Content-Type header. JSON request encoding is currently the only supported content type for this feature.

    my $ws = WebService::Simple->new(
        base_url => 'http://example.com/',
        param   =>  { aaa => 'zzz' },
    #   content_type => 'application/json', # either here
    );
    my $response = $ws->post('api/echo', { hello => 'world' }, 'Content-Type' => 'application/json'); # or here

request_url($extra_path, $args)

Return request URL.

base_url

basic_params

cache

Each request is prepended by an optional cache look-up. If you supply a Cache object to new(), the module will look into the cache first.

  my $cache   = Cache::File->new(
      cache_root      => '/tmp/mycache',
      default_expires => '30 min',
  );
  
  my $flickr = WebService::Simple->new(
      base_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/",
      cache    => $cache,
      param    => { api_key => "your_api_key, }
  );

response_parser

See PARSERS below.

SUBCLASSING

For better encapsulation, you can create subclass of WebService::Simple to customize the behavior

  package WebService::Simple::Flickr;
  use base qw(WebService::Simple);
  __PACKAGE__->config(
    base_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/",
    upload_url => "http://api.flickr.com/services/upload/",
  );

  sub test_echo
  {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->get( { method => "flickr.test.echo", name => "value" } );
  }

  sub upload
  {
    my $self = shift;
    local $self->{base_url} = $self->config->{upload_url};
    $self->post( 
      Content_Type => "form-data",
      Content => { title => "title", description => "...", photo => ... },
    );
  }

PARSERS

Web services return their results in various different formats. Or perhaps you require more sophisticated results parsing than what WebService::Simple provides.

WebService::Simple by default uses XML::Simple, but you can easily override that by providing a parser object to the constructor:

  my $service = WebService::Simple->new(
    response_parser => AVeryComplexParser->new,
    ...
  );
  my $response = $service->get( ... );
  my $thing = $response->parse_response;

For example. If you want to set XML::Simple options, use WebService::Simple::Parser::XML::Simple including this module:

  use WebService::Simple;
  use WebService::Simple::Parser::XML::Simple;
  use XML::Simple;
  
  my $xs = XML::Simple->new( KeyAttr => [], ForceArray => ['entry'] );
  my $service = WebService::Simple->new(
      base_url => "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos",
      param    => { v => 2 },
      response_parser =>
        WebService::Simple::Parser::XML::Simple->new( xs => $xs ),
  );

This allows great flexibility in handling different Web Services

REPOSITORY

https://github.com/yusukebe/WebService-Simple

AUTHOR

Yusuke Wada <yusuke@kamawada.com>

Daisuke Maki <daisuke@endeworks.jp>

Matsuno Tokuhiro

Naoki Tomita (tomi-ru)

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See perlartistic.