ShopStyle API - How to Invoke an HTTP request - api

Question

How do I Invoke an HTTP request with a particular URL and process the body of the response as XML?
Information Provided by ShopStyle:
HOW TO USE THE API:
Choose the method that returns the data your application needs. For example, the /products method is used to get products that match a given category or brand.Construct a URL for that method with the appropriate host, method name, and query parameters. Invoke the URL as an HTTP GET.
When the HTTP response arrives, extract the required data elements from the response's body.The rest of this document describes the details of constructing the right URL for each of the API methods. The XML format of the responses may be seen by clicking on the sample URLs shown for each method. The responses in JSON format contain identical information, just in a different format.
SHOPSTYLE API URLS
All ShopStyle API URLs have the following form:
http://api.shopstyle.com/api/VERSION/METHOD_NAMEpid=YOUR_API_KEY&format=FORMAT&...
The METHOD_NAME is taken from the list of methods in the various API shown at left (Press Link To View List of Methods-https://www.shopstylecollective.com/api/overview).
COMMON API PARAMETERS
All methods in the API accept these parameters:
API_KEY (my unique key is ******************)
pid Unique API_KEY string that is assigned to the caller. You can find your API Key on the Account Settings page.
FORMAT
The format of the response. Supported values are:
json - The response is in JSON format with UTF-8 encoding. This is the default if the parameter is absent.
xml - The response is in XML format with UTF-8 encoding.
jsonp - The response is in JSON format with UTF-8 encoding wrapped in a JavaScript method called padding. The padding must be specified with the query parameter 'callback'. Only single expressions (function reference, or object property function reference) are accepted as valid padding.
When set to 1 or 'true' the HTTP status will always be 200. Use the field "errorCode" in the response to detect whether the API Call was successful. By default, when an error occur the HTTP Status of the response will be different than 200
Again I am a beginner, so please provide detailed information on how to retrieve CATEGORY data (Examples: Dresses, Tops, Buttoms, etc) in XML format.**
Thank you!!!

Answer 1

Here's a simple example to get your started. Copy the code below and put it into a file, say "cat.php". Then run it by typing "php cat.php" at a command prompt (assumes you have php on your machine):
<?php
// don't show dom parse errors
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
// grab the xml from the api
$response = file_get_contents("http://api.shopstyle.com/api/v2/categories?pid=TEST&format=xml");
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTML($response);
// grab all the categories
$elements = $doc->getElementsByTagName('categories');
foreach($elements as $node){
foreach($node->childNodes as $child) {
// get the name out of the category
$nodes = $child->getElementsByTagName("name");
foreach ($nodes as $name) {
echo $name->nodeValue . PHP_EOL;
}
}
}