Feature of the Week: New REST Client for PHP

We spent some time developing a new full-featured REST Client in PHP in order to make it much easier for you to develop new Apps for the BibSonomy universe.

The new REST client library comes with a lot of new features:

• It's full-featured that means the client supports the whole functionality of the API.
• It contains a model such that it is convenient for you to work with the data.
• It supports Basic Auth as well as OAuth authentication methods.
• It's easy to integrate in your PHP App, since we have used composer, a powerful tool in order to integrate and autoload requirements of 3rd party software.
• You can output a fetched set of publications as a CSL-rendered publication list in your favorite citation style.

In order to use the restclient-php library you need to do three steps:

1. Install the library via composer and include the autoloader file.
   
   Installing Composer locally is a matter of just running the installer in your project directory:
   
   curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
   
   Then, add the restclient to the requirements of your project. Run the following command on a terminal within your project folder:
   
   php composer.phar require academicpuma/restclient-php:1.0.0-alpha
    
2. Create an Accessor. This object is required to authenticate your App on the REST API of BibSonomy. You can choose between two authentication methods, Basic Auth or OAuth. For Basic Auth this would be:
   
   <?php

require 'path/to/vendor/autoload.php';
use AcademicPuma\RestClient\Accessor\BasicAuthAccessor;

$accessor = new BasicAuthAccessor('http://www.bibsonomy.org', [your-username], '[your-apikey]');
?>
 
3. Create a RESTClient object and perform a request. This object is your interface to BibSonomy. This class provides all supported functions to get, create, update, and delete posts, tags, documents, user and groups. For example:
   
   <?php

use AcademicPuma\RestClient\RESTClient;
use AcademicPuma\RestClient\Config;

$restClient = new RESTClient($accessor);
//choose Resource type and tags
$restClient->getPosts(Config\Resourcetype::BIBTEX, Config\Grouping::USER, [username], ['tag1', 'tag2']);
?>
   
   Now, you can choose the format. There are four options: XML, CSL (JSON), Model (PHP Objects), Bibliography (CSL-rendered publication list):
   
   

   <?php
   
   
   //output xml
   echo $restClient->xml();
   
   //output CSL
   echo json_encode($restClient->csl());
   
   //use the model
   $posts = $restClient->model();
   foreach($posts as $post) {
       echo $post->getResource()->getTitle()."<br />\n";
   }
   
   //print a bibliography in your preferred style and language
   echo $restClient->bibliography('apa', 'en-US');
   
   ?>
   

Currently restclient-php is considered as unstable alpha version. If you encounter  any errors or problems, feel free to report an issue on our code repository.

Happy tagging,
Sebastian.

Feature of the Week: Safari Extension

We already released a Chrome extension and a Firefox plugin to replace our old Javascript based bookmarklets. Today we are pleased to announce the launch of our new Safari extension. The extension adds three new buttons to your browser:

The first button opens your personal BibSonomy home page. With the other two buttons you can post new bookmarks or new publications to BibSonomy. 

You can download the plugin from the Browser Add-ons & Bookmarklets page.

happy tagging
Daniel

Feature of the Week: Fast tag editing

A very comfortable feature of BibSonomy is available again in Version 3, an easy way to edit tags without having to edit the whole entry. Whenever looking at your own entries in some way you can use the "edit tags button" shown in the picture below to change the tags of this entry. 

The following window will appear. New tags can be added by typing the tag followed by a space bar. Just don't forget to hit the save button! 

You can also edit tags of multiple entries which is desribed in another FotW. 

Happy tagging!
Lena