There and Back Again

Ok so one this to remember when using API is don’t use it stupidly.

So for some reason i got a couple users who are making 20 requests to webthumb a second.

This hurts performance for everyone and doesn’t get you results any faster.

No matter how often you poll webthumb you images won’t get completed any faster.

Also if you making a large number of requests, please combine the requests, so you make a request for the status of 20 jobs at once instead of making 20 requests.

I’ll be fixing these problems at the firewall level, if you end up blocked send me an email and will work out a solution that doesn’t involve making my server cry.

The webthumb API seems to be running pretty stable these days. But it doesn’t have a lot of users yet, so nows your chance to change that.

I’m running a short contest giving out webthumb accounts with higher API limits as prizes. You can win one of these prizes by adding the best webthumb integration to any open source software. One options might be to add a wordpress plugin for making thumbnail links.

The top 5 projects will recieve lifetime accounts with a 5000 per month limit

I will also be giving away 500 per month accounts to anyone who finds a bug in Webthumb and lets me know about it.

To submit your project just add a comment to this message. Also if you need it, I can provider SVN and wiki hosting for any webthumb related projects.

Note:
Base webthumb accounts can generate 250 thumbnail accounts per month.

The only current known bug is that some urls aren’t validated correctly, you won’t get an upgraded account for submitting this again. This is a bug in PEAR::Validate so if anyone is knows of a replacement or wants to figure out exactly what is going on let me know.

Due too a last minute change i’ll be at php/works on Wednesday.

I’ll be giving two AJAX sessions:
Scaling with AJAX
JavaScript Light & Sweet

I’ll be following the original synopsis for the sessions, but since I haven’t started preparing there might be some slight changes.

Since it was so last minute I won’t be at the entire conference I’m flying into Toronto on tuesday and returning to Phoenix wednesday night, but hopefully I’ll still have a chance to put a face too a lot of PHP developers i’ve only met online.

Understanding AJAX has finally made its way through the supply chain and is shipping from online places. I’ve even heard its available at book stores but I haven’t had a chance to see it in one yet. I’ll be stopping by one after work to grab some pictures.

Over the weekend Hansin wrote a PHP Webthumb API wrapper and released in under open source. Webthumb seems to be handling the load pretty well, its already generated 2600+ thumbnails today.

So if you want an easy way to generate webpage thumbnails right from your PHP applications now you have one.

I’ll be looking at some various rate limits and queue adjustments over the next week to keep one user from clogging up the queue too much. Until then be nice, and enjoy.

Webthumb now has an API. Its a simple REST API based on posting some simple XML.

It gives you the ability to request thumbnails, check on there status, and even download files.

To use the API register and then goto your user page, your API key is shown there.

Basic docs on the Webthumb API are available.

If you have any comments or suggestions leave them as comments.

The API is currently in beta so im sure there will be some changes and additions, but its a very usable state. If someone wraps the API for easy PHP access i’d be interested in hosting the code so if you write a wrapper please get in touch with me.