14 DAY TRIAL // A new open source project available from Microsoft is designed to simplify the work for PHP developers looking to leverage Bing search results in their applications. The Bing Search Library for PHP is now available for download from the Redmond company’s open source project repository, CodePlex. According to George Thomas Jr., from the Bing Developer Center, the Bing Search Library for PHP was built with help from PHP guru Cal Evans and was released to devs under a BSD license. The software giant credits Evans for designing and writing the actual code in the Bing Search Library for PHP.
“The Bing Search Library for PHP allows you to easily use Bing's API to fetch search results and use in your own PHP application. The library for PHP is designed to give PHP developers an object-oriented interface to access the Bing API. It supports fluent interfaces in PHP so that options can be easily chained together for readability. The heart of the library is the MsftBingSearch class. It supports all of the options available for searching web and images that are defined in the API,” the description of the Bing Search Library for PHP reads.
With Bing SDK for PHP, developers have at their disposal a toolkit that streamlines their use of Bing's API for PHP apps. Through the application programming interface, search results can be retrieved from Bing and integrated into third-party applications easily. Evans even offers a tutorial on his website on the Bing Search Library for PHP, along with a few details related to the project.
“Back in March I had the opportunity to work on a project for Microsoft that is now coming to light. I was tasked with writing a PHP wrapper for the Bing API that Microsoft has been building. I’ve written API wrappers before and it is either a fun experience or it is a nightmare, depending on whether the API is easy to work with. I am pleased to report that the Bing Search API is well thought out and very easy to work with. For PHP developers, I am hoping that what I am about to show you makes it even easier,” Evans states.