Temboo does lots more than just work with APIs. We've got a growing collection of programming utilities that will make your life much easier. In this tutorial we'll show you how to use these handy code shortcuts by working through a URL encoding example.
You might ask "why is URL encoding important?". Well, URLs can only be sent over the Internet using the ASCII character-set. Since URLs often contain non-ASCII characters, they need to be converted so they only contain valid characters. The general rule is that unsafe characters are replaced with a % followed by two hexadecimal digits. Spaces are replaced by either a plus sign (+) or with %20. You've probably seen URLs full of strange looking characters, and now you know why!
The good news is that you don't actually have to worry about the specifics. Our URL encoding utility will do all the work for you.
1 Log in to Temboo. If you don't already have an account, you can register for free.
2Make sure you've downloaded the Temboo PHP SDK and that you've added it to your development environment as described in our PHP getting started tutorial.
3Go to the Utilities > Encoding > URLEncode Choreo page. Select PHP from the drop down menu at the top of the page.
4Enter some text that you want to URL encode. It should contain illegal characters, like spaces, accents, and punctuation. Here's some text you can use:
I'm Enc0ding URL$ wITh T3mBo0
5Click Generate Code to test the Choreo from our website, and you'll see the the URL encoded result returned by the Choreo.
6To call the URL encoding Choreo from a PHP program, copy the generated code from your browser directly into a PHP script and try running it there. Remember to comment in the line that declares the Temboo_Session object and substitute in your Temboo account details - you can find these on your Temboo Applications page. Your code should look something like this:
<?php
require 'php-sdk/src/temboo.php';
// Instantiate the Choreo, using a previously instantiated Temboo_Session object, eg:
$session = new Temboo_Session("ACCOUNT_NAME", "APP_NAME", "APP_KEY");
$uRLEncode = new Utilities_Encoding_URLEncode($session);
// Get an input object for the Choreo
$uRLEncodeInputs = $uRLEncode->newInputs();
// Set inputs
$uRLEncodeInputs->setText("I'm Enc0ding URL$ wITh T3mBo0");
// Execute Choreo and get results
$uRLEncodeResults = $uRLEncode->execute($uRLEncodeInputs)->getResults();
// Print Results
echo "URL encoded text: " . $uRLEncodeResults->getURLEncodedText() . "\n";
?>
7Run the code and the URL encoded version of the text will be printed in the console.
We're all finished! Now you know about Temboo's range of handy developer utilities and how to access them via our PHP SDK. Check out the rest of the 2000+ Choreos in our Library and see how you can combine them with our utilities to build something amazing.
Once you've got your code up and running, you're ready to move on and do more. From monitoring your running applications, to moving your generated Temboo code to your preferred development environment and sharing it with colleagues, collaborators and friends - we've got you covered.
We're always happy to help. Just email us at support@temboo.com, and we'll answer your questions.