O'Reilly Open Source Convention - August 1-5, 2005

Session
Easy eBay Web Services with PHP 5 and Services_Ebay
Adam Trachtenberg, Senior Manager of Platform Evangelism, eBay

Track: PHP
Date: Thursday, August 4th, 2005
Time: 1:45pm - 2:30pm
Location: E141
eBay has emerged as a platform where people can buy and sell practically anything. Best of all, eBay isn't constrained by HTML. By using eBay's web services APIs, you can hook into the eBay platform using XML to integrate eBay into your own applications.

Services_Ebay is a PHP 5-only PEAR module that makes it drop dead simple to interact with eBay web services. It wraps around eBay's XML API to provide an object-oriented interface to eBay.

In this session, Trachtenberg walks through getting started with Services_Ebay, shows how to search the eBay listing database, and then displays the found items in a variety of ways. He also demonstrates how to create a simple listing tool. Learn how to automate the process of listing items for sale on the site.

Additionally, Services_Ebay is a real-world implementation of a PHP 5 program, one that showcases many of the reasons to upgrade from PHP 4 to PHP 5. Throughout the piece, Trachtenberg highlights all the places where a PHP 5 feature has come into play, so you can see where PHP 5 makes a real difference.