Make your WordPress Blog a Web Service in Few Steps

With PHP DataServices it is just a matter of putting a little configuration php file to make your database available as a web service. I only needed few minutes to make a simple web service from my blog after figuring out my wordpress database structure, http://wpbits.wordpress.com/2007/08/08/a-look-inside-the-wordpress-database/. In this guide, I m exposing the title, date and the content of each of my blog for my service, But you can extend this more the way you prefer.

1. Download and install WSF/PHP 1.3.2 and PHP Data Services Library. If WSF/PHP 2.0 released by the time you are reading this, (it is to be released in this week), you only need to install WSF/PHP, since the DataServices library is packed with WSF/PHP from 2.0.
2. Drop the following file (Say WordPressService.php) in to any of your web server document directories.

   <?php
   
   // Make sure you put the DataService.php in your include path
   require_once("wso2/DataServices/DataService.php");
   
   // database configuraitons
   // you have to set your database configurations in here..
   // These entries can be copy and past from the wp-config.php in your wordpress installation
   
   $config = array(
   "db" => "mysql",
   "username"=>DB_USER,
   "password"=> DB_PASSWORD,
   "dbname"=>DB_NAME,
   "dbhost"=>DB_HOST);
   // output format, plese check the API from http://wso2.org/wiki/display/wsfphp/API+for+Data+Services+Revised
   $outputFormat = array("resultElement" => "Posts",
   "rowElement" => "post",
   "elements" => array( "title" => "post_title",
   "content" => "post_content",
   "date" => "post_date"));
   
   // sql statment to execute, note that I assume the table prefix is wp_ (so the table name is wp_posts)
   // just check $table_prefix variable in the wp-config.php of your wordpress installation
   $sql="select post_title, post_content, post_date from wp_posts where post_status='published'";
   
   // operations is consist of inputFormat (optional), outputFormat(required), sql(sql), input_mapping(optional)
   $operations = array("getPosts"=>array("outputFormat"=>$outputFormat, "sql"=>$sql));
   $my_data_service = new DataService(array("config"=>$config,"operations"=>$operations));
   
   $my_data_service->reply();
   ?>

3. It is all. Just access the above file from a web browser, you see your service is hosted. Here is the endpoint for my service. http://ws.dimuthu.org/blog/WordpressService.php. Since I m using WSF/PHP latest svn, I m able to retrieve the wsdl automatically from http://ws.dimuthu.org/blog/WordpressService.php?wsdl. Please wait for WSF/PHP 2.0 release for ?wsdl feature.
4. To verify whether your service deployed correctly, you may need to write a simple test client. Yea I too wrote one. Since I have the wsdl generated, I just needed to generate the code for the client from the wsdl using wsdl2php tool. There is an online version of the tool in the wsf/php demo site. Here is the generated code for my client, http://labs.wso2.org/wsf/php/wsdl2phptool.php?wsdl_url=http%3A%2F%2Fws.dimuthu.org%2Fblog%2FWordpressService.php%3Fwsdl. I added the following code to the TODO section in handling response,

       if(is_array($response->post)) {
           foreach($response->post as $post) {
   
               echo "<h2>".$post->title . " - ".$post->date."</h2>";
               echo "<p>";
               echo $post->content;
               echo "</p>";
   
               echo "<hr/>";
           }
       }

   Check my Web Service client for the above service here, http://ws.dimuthu.org/blog/WordpressClient.php.

Now I can call for my blog from any web service enabled platform.