lab 24 - google api

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NAME

lab 24 - call google api from inferno

DESCRIPTION

I looked around to see what was available. Inferno has no WSDL or SOAP support, and limited xml. However, most of the SOAP messages are boiler plate, so we just need a program to handle the http. The program svc/webget/webget is something I hadn't noticed before. It serves a file /chan/webget which we can write GET and POST messages to and read back the result.

With this in mind I tried writing shell scripts to read and write the SOAP messages to the google api url.

I needed to debug webget a little because the POST didn't work. The changed files are attached below.

The google api download came with sample SOAP messages. I inserted my key (removed from the attached files), and placed the string PHRASE where the search phrase was to appear. The shell script runs sed on the file replacing PHRASE with the actual search phrase then writes the POST message and SOAP message to /chan/webget 

     <> /chan/webget {
      phrase=$"*
      x := "{sed 's/PHRASE/' ^ 
       $phrase ^'/' doGoogleSearch.xml}
      size=${len $x}
      echo POST∎ ^ 
       $size ^ 
       ∎0∎http://api.google.com/search/beta2 ^
       ∎text/xml∎no-cache >[1=0]
      echo -n $x >[1=0]
      getlines {f = ${unquote $line}
       if { ~ ${hd $f} OK} {
        f = ${tl $f}
        read ${hd $f}
        exit
       } {exit}
      }
     }

The first line read from /chan/webget is the result status. Either 

     OK length reqid type url

or 

     ERROR reqid message

I use the length returned from the OK message to read the whole rest of the message to standard output.

To build, copy the limbo *.[bm] files to /svc/webget/webget and mk install. The google.sh and spell.sh files should be changed to point to your .xml soap messages. Change the key in the .xml files to your key. Then for example, 

     % svc/webget/webget&
     % spell britany spars
     britney spears
     % 
     % fn g {google $* |grep URL:}
     % g plan9
     URL: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/
     URL: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/plan_9_wiki/
     URL: http://www.plan9.org/
     URL: http://www.ecf.toronto.edu/plan9/
     URL: http://www.ecf.toronto.edu/plan9/plan9faq.html
     URL: http://plan9.aichi-u.ac.jp/
     URL: http://cm.bell-labs.com/
     URL: http://www.fywss.com/plan9/plan9faq.html
     URL: http://plan9.att.com/
     URL: http://www.plan9.com/

This also works through an http proxy if you configure the proxy in /services/webget/config.

I piped the SOAP output from through a command called rss which I originally wrote to format RSS XML. This just removes the markup and makes it a little easier to read.

CONCLUSION

How easy was that! Well it could be easier. Is all that SOAP boilerplate really needed? <Insert your rant against SOAP here>

FILES

lab24.tgz

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