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Google SOAP!

TorgoX on 2002-04-07T01:38:30

Dear Log,

Neat!

I can't stand it.

Matts on 2002-04-07T13:52:41

I just hate to see stuff like this. It makes me cringe.

What was wrong with Google's lovely simple XML interface, where you simply replaced the word "search" for "xml" in the querystring, and got nice XML back detailing everything such a SOAP response would? (you can no longer do this without paying for the service, but I believe it's still there) Do we really need the SOAP layer on top of this? Is plain HTTP and a smattering of XML really that much harder than an API?

I feel like such an old fart when I see things like this and it just looks so "new for the sake of it"...

Re:I can't stand it.

djberg96 on 2002-04-07T23:38:12

Flavor of the month syndrome. All you have to say around our office is "Web Service" and a warm, fuzzy feeling starts to permeate the room.

Re:I can't stand it.

pne on 2002-04-08T08:40:56

I just hate to see stuff like this. It makes me cringe.

When you said that, I first thought you were referring to this lovely bit of API:


soap.addMethodWithSOAPAction('doGoogleSearch', ns, 'key', 'q', 'start',
                            'maxResults', 'filter', 'restrict',
                            'safeSearch', 'lr', 'ie', 'oe')
r = soap.doGoogleSearch(key, query, 0, 10, false, nil, false, nil,
                        'latin1', 'latin1')

12 arguments to the first method with no indication of what any of them are for; then the second one has "false, nil, false, nil" and you have no idea WTF is going on.

Some sort of named parameter passing would have been better, I think -- use a hash or something, or even just something like '-source', 'foo', '-dest', 'bar'.

Re:I can't stand it.

Fletch on 2002-04-08T15:52:10

I think that first part of the incantation is priming the Ruby SOAP interface, not part of the google interface itself. And the arguments to the second were what was named in the first call (some sort of key, the query itself, start at result 0, return 10 results, don't filter results, no clue :), adult search filter off, no clue, input encoding, output encoding).