Consuming a JSON service
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is probably one of the best formats available for exposing data, due to its easy-to-read syntax, which greatly simplifies the parsing. In fact, PHP (as of its 5.2.0 release) provides built-in methods to convert data from a JSON-formatted string to a PHP native data type and from PHP types to JSON.
In this recipe, we will learn how to use the HttpSocket class to consume a JSON service from a foreign site. This time, we are going to use the YouTube JSON API to allow our users to search for YouTube videos that match a given search query.
The JSON service we will be consuming from YouTube uses a variant of JSON, called JSON-C. JSON-C is nothing more than JSON, but Google is making a distinction between what YouTube used to provide as JSON, and the new version it is now producing. YouTube's JSON-C-based responses are far simpler than their JSON service. Consequently, Google has decided to deprecate JSON in favor of JSON-C in the near...
