MSN Live Search API V2.0 in PHP

Comparing MS’s documentation for the the Image type verses the Web type reveals some parameters differ. The following would need to be changed as well:

$result .= "&Web.Count=" . $this->recordsPerPage;

$result .= "&Web.Offset=" . ($this->page - 1) * $this->recordsPerPage;

Change “Web” -> “Image”.

Why MS didn’t just call those “Count” and “Offset” is bizarre, but they tied the parameters to the specific query chosen.

Additionally, the Web.Options will likely also cause problems for the Image type, so you might want to try commentating that line out as well — those options may not work for the Image type.

Microsoft’s documentation:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd250845.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd250862.aspx

Do you know if there is a limitation of the query length?

Reading the MSN API docs, there doesn’t seem to be an expressed limit on URL length, so the best thing is try it and see what happens. If they conform to the HTTP specs, it should work.

Try manually creating your URL and trying it in the browser and see if you get data back, or the 414 error.

From RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1) Section 3.2.1

The HTTP protocol does not place any a priori limit on the length of a URI. Servers MUST be able to handle the URI of any resource they serve, and SHOULD be able to handle URIs of unbounded length if they provide GET-based forms that could generate such URIs. A server SHOULD return 414 (Request-URI Too Long) status if a URI is longer than the server can handle (see section 10.4.15).

Microsoft changes many of the names between web and image search, so like comment #2 above, you’ve got to find them all and change them. The Docs are the best guide to find the changes between the two.

If you get no results back, it’s because it errored out somewhere - the API isn’t very friendly with error messages, so it’s trial and error. Look at the example responses and you’ll notice the changes.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd250937.aspx (Image parameters) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd250862.aspx (Image example response) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd250852.aspx (Web parameters) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd250894.aspx (Web example response)

In the search() function, start with something like (notice the changes between the web and image versions):

    $xml_results = $xml->children('http://schemas.microsoft.com/LiveSearch/2008/04/XML/multimedia');
    $this->totalRecords = $xml_results->Image->Total;
    $this->totalPages = ceil($this->totalRecords / $this->recordsPerPage);
    if ($this->totalRecords > 0) {
        foreach($xml_results->Image->Results->ImageResult as $item) {
            $this->results[] = array (
                'url' => $item->Url,
                'urlDisplay' => $item->MediaUrl,
                'urlCache' => "",
                'title' => isset($item->Title) && trim($item->Title) != '' ? $item->Title : $item->MediaUrl,
                'width' => isset($item->Width) ? $item->Width : 0,
                'height' => isset($item->Height) ? $item->Height : 0,
                'filesize' => isset($item->FileSize) ? $item->FileSize : 0,
                'thumbnail' => isset($item->Thumbnail->Url) ? $item->Thumbnail->Url : 0,
                'thubmnail-height' => isset($item->Thumbnail->Height) ? $item->Thumbnail->Height : 0,
                'thubmnail-width' => isset($item->Thumbnail->Width) ? $item->Thumbnail->Width : 0,
                'thubmnail-size' => isset($item->Thumbnail->FileSize) ? $item->Thumbnail->FileSize : 0,
                'snippet' => "" //Images don't have snippets
            );
        }
    }

and the getMSNURL() function similar to (as a starting point):

function getMSNURL() {
    $result = "http://api.search.live.net/xml.aspx?";
    $result .= "AppId=" . $this->appID;
    $result .= "&Query=" . urlencode($this->query);
    $result .= "&Sources=Image";
    $result .= "&Version=2.0";
    return $result;
}

All that is UNTESTED, but should give you a starting point to see how it must be done. After that, you’ll have to re-write the search_results() function to handle filesize and the other different results.

I didn’t look up what all the parameters are - some are obvious, but some are similar and could have subtle differences. The MSN API docs should have details.

That should get you started on making the changes. You don’t really need to translate C#->PHP, as what really changed are the input and output parameters. For that, the MSN docs should highlight the changes needed if you dig deep enough.

Have fun!