APIs Tutorials

  • HTML5′s window.postMessage API

    I've create a MooTools plugin to wrap window.postMessage: PostMessager. Click here to download it!

  • Create a Dojo-Powered WordPress Website View

    Yesterday I showed you WordPress' awesome JSON plugin named JSON API.  Now that I can get my blog posts in JSON format, it's time to create an awesome AJAX'ed web app with that data.  I've chosen to use the power of Dojo and Dijit to create a stylish, AJAX-powered web app which provides intelligent views of all of my blog posts.  You wont want to miss this post!

  • WordPress JSON API Plugin

    Ever since I moved to a mostly-JavaScript job, I've become more and more enamored with the simplicity and usefulness of JSON.  Now I want everything available in JSON format, and when I encounter a service which doesn't provide a JSON API, I have a fit.  I was recently brainstorming a way to place my website into a Dojo/Dijit widget and realized that WordPress doesn't provide a native JSON method of retrieving post information.  Enter the awesome JSON API plugin.

  • Create a Dynamic Flickr Image Search with the Dojo Toolkit

    The Dojo Toolkit is a treasure chest of great JavaScript classes.  You can find basic JavaScript functionality classes for AJAX, node manipulation, animations, and the like within Dojo.  You can find elegant, functional UI widgets like DropDown Menus, tabbed interfaces, and form element replacements within Dijit.  In DojoX you can find charting libraries, special data stores, vector graphic helpers, and much more.

  • Change Category Slug within WordPress

    When I first started this blog, I set the category "slug" to "sugar."  Why sugar?  Because a lot of a good thing is candy;  thus, a bunch of MooTools tutorials is as sweet as sugar.  While I get a giggle out of calling my categories sugar, Google doesn't find it nearly as funny, nor does Yahoo or Bing.  In an effort to increase my SEO, I wanted to change my category slug to "tutorials."  That's where the awesome Redirection plugin and a simple regular expression comes into place.

  • Async Google Analytics

    It seems like every website these days uses Google Analytics. And why not? It's an outstanding tool that gives you any and every statistic you could ever want. The problem with Google Analytics is that it's been, well, slow loading at times. That's why I was so pumped when I saw Google was releasing an async version of their script.

  • Using the GitHub API and PHP to Get Repository Information

    GitHub is an awesome place to host your open source project code. MooTools, Prototype, and jQuery all use GitHub. As you probably know, the MooTools Forge requires your plugins be hosted on GitHub. The only problem with hosting all my MooTools plugins is that I lose traffic when I want people to see my code. Problem solved: use PHP, the GitHub API, and PHP Markdown to display files of my choice on my website.

  • Simple PHP Caching and Content Retrieval Function

    One way to make your website exponentially faster is by caching both remote and internal requests. Why request your RSS subscriber count from FeedBurner more than once a day if that count is calculated once per day? Why hit your database on each page load if that content rarely changes? I've created a primitive request-and-cache function for PHP that checks for fresh content in the cache and retrieves content from a source if fresh content isn't available.

  • Get a URL’s Reddit Score Using PHP and JSON

    Since we can see Digg turning more into a funny-pic-and-vid site each day, I've turned my attention to Reddit. Reddit just seems more controlled and programmer-friendly. Since I have respect for Reddit I thought I'd put together a quick tutorial on how you can retrieve a URL's Reddit score using PHP.

  • Dynamically Create Charts Using jQuery Flot and Google Analytics

    Earlier in the week I published a popular article titled Dynamically Create Charts Using MooTools MilkChart and Google Analytics. My post showed you how to use MooTools MilkChart and a splash of PHP to create beautiful charts of Google Analytics data. I was interested in seeing what jQuery had to offer in the charting department. jQuery Flot is what I found.