Searching for local businesses via text

Ever need to find a local business? You want to know where to find the nearest pizza, sushi, or maybe even a plumber? This script will let you type in find sushi on your phone and returns local sushi restaurants. Similarly, typing in find computers will find any local computer stores.

We'll use Yahoo's YQL system to perform a local lookup using the Yelp.com API. This way, we're actually using two APIs at one time. YQL lets us perform queries rapidly, so you'll find the speed impressive.

Getting ready

The complete source code for this recipe can be found in the Chapter5/ folder.

How to do it...

Ok, let's set up our initial app that will let us use Yahoo's YQL service to search for local businesses and restaurants.

1. Download the Twilio Helper Library from (https://github.com/twilio/twilio-php/zipball/master) and unzip it.

2. Upload the Services/ folder to your website.

3. Upload the config.php file to your website and make sure the following variables are set:

   <...