PHP Viddler API Client – Forked
Okay that title sounds either a bit naughty or nasty, it’s neither. I forked the official PHP Viddler API wrapper and wrote a new one. Why? Well because when I worked there I wrote smaller client which worked out well for me so I’ve decided to release it.
If you strip out the comments from the new client, it’s less than 200 lines of code. Now I just focused on the core API, I didn’t add any of the add-on methods for embeds, oembed, etc. If you are looking for those I would suggest using the original Viddler client. I wanted to keep this lightweight, I may add it later on as an extension so if you want to use it you can, but for now, just keeping it simple.
So how did I strip so much out of the original? I used no 3rd party classes. I used only what is in PHP. I ditched the xmlparser.php file and went with SimpleXML. I also didn’t write a method for every for every possible API method. Actually I didn’t write one for any of them. I took advantage of PHP’s magic method __call(). Which is automatically called when the user calls an object method that doesn’t exist.
$viddler = new Viddler('API KEY');
$res = $viddler->user_auth(array(
'user' => 'USERNAME'
'password' => 'YOUR PASS'
));
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Simple Tag Bar for WordPress
So when I did the little redesign of my site earlier this week I added a right rail. With that I wanted to add some way to show tags that was not a tag cloud and wasn’t just a list of tags. I noticed on a co-worker’s blog (Kyle Slattery) that he had a really nice tag display. So I stole it, er better yet re-purposed it. The way Kyle did it reminded me of how Django makes its graphs, very clean and crisp. I really liked the idea and the presentation.
He doesn’t use WordPress so I had to build a quick script to accomplish this in WordPress. Easy enough actually. What it does it grab your top ten tags then do a little math to display them in a graph format. The more times a tag was used, the larger the graph. Again pretty simple.
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$5 Album Round-up – March
Well it’s only been a few days since my last $5 Amazon round-up but I was really late getting that posted, so I wanted to be on-time for this one. In case you don’t know every month Amazon releases 100 albums for $5 a piece. It’s a pretty good deal and sometimes you can find some really good albums for a few singles. So instead of hitting the strip joint, save your singles and buy some music.
Below the post is broken down into 4 categories: No Brainers, If I Have Extra Cash, Best Covers and The Wackness. Of course these are just my opinions so take them or leave them, no worries. Better yet, comment with what you think are the stand-out albums listed this month. Don’t hate; debate.
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$5 Album Round-up – February
I was going thru Amazon MP3 today, like any other day and saw a few really good albums listed for five bucks. Thought I would share them with you. I tried to run thru as many as I could and choose what I thought were some must-haves, nice-to-haves and the albums with the best cover art. Everything is listed below, hope you can find at least one thing you might enjoy.
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Departing from Viddler
After about 10 months at the internet start-up Viddler, I have decided to move on to something that better suits me. I am moving back into the media business with a company named Journal Register Company. I am very excited for this transition and to get back to something I never knew I enjoyed so much until I left it, the news.
Viddler is full of great people, smart people and they have developed a great product and I have no doubts they will be around for years. Personally, it just wasn’t fulfilling. I didn’t find myself growing like I would have liked to, really pushing the envelope of what I know I am capable of. Some of this is my fault, just lack of passion for this particular business; but all-in-all I am extremely happy that I took the chance to try something new and meet a lot of great people along the way. My last day at Viddler with be March 12th and I start JRC on the 15th.
This is actually quite comical because about 6 years ago I started at Tribune Company on March 15th as well. Must be something magical about this date. Maybe it’s destiny, uh, maybe not; just coincidence?
