Since there is no better way to learn a language then actually working with it I decided I would create a PHP library to access the Microsoft Tag API. Problem with the API is that it was not really PHP friendly in that PHP soap-client could not parse the wsdl created for the API. I the tried a couple of other soap libraries out there but since I’m a newbie not much success was granted to me.

Also I saw that  a REST interface to the MS Tag API was a popular demand over at the community site for MS TAG. I set off to create a REST interface for the API. To do this I used the WCF REST Starter kit preview 2 to create a sort of facade to the actual API service (which is also WCF, but just not REST exposed). It is nothing more than a service that forwards request to the genuine service and returns the result of that service in json. For more information on this facade service go to: http://tag.ws.suddenelfilio.net. The facade is hosted in the Windows Azure cloud.

Along side the development of the REST interface I also started implementing a PHP library that uses the facade service to interact with the MS Tag API. I put this library up at codeplex: http://mstagrestlib.codeplex.com
Currently I’ve implemented support for generating uri, dialer, vcard and freetext tags as well as requesting the generated tag from the MS Tag API. The codeplex project site also has some samples on how to use the library

I plan to implement the entire MS Tag API but the keyword is baby steps

Feel free to download the PHP library a give me feedback on how to improve it because I’m pretty sure it can be better, but I’m limited by the little php knowledge I posses.

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