Simon Willison’s Weblog

Two new web services

5th September 2002

I’ve implemented two example web services to demonstrate the Incutio PHP XML-RPC library’s capabilities. The services allow you to search and retrieve articles from FOLDOC and the Jargon File, two popular freely available online dictionaries.

The Jargon File

The Jargon File is “a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor”.

It is currently edited by Eric Raymond, and can be found on the web at http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/

The web service interface to the Jargon File allows you to search the dictionary and retrieve entries from it.

Server: scripts.incutio.com
Path:   /xmlrpc/services/jargonfile.php
Port:   80

The following methods are available (in addition to the standard system methods):

jargon.about

Returns a string containing information about the Jargon File and the web service interface.

jargon.search

Accepts a string (the search term) and returns an array of shortnames for entries that contain the term.

jargon.getEntryByShortname

Accepts a string (the shortname), and returns a struct representing the entry with that shortname.

jargon.getEntryByTitle

Accepts a string (the title), and returns a struct representing the entry with that title.

I have written a guide to accessing the Jargon File web service using Python’s xmlrpclib.

FOLDOC

FOLDOC is the Free Online Dictionary of Computing, edited by Denis Howe and made available under the GNU Free Documentation License. It can be found on the web at www.foldoc.org.

Server: scripts.incutio.com
Path:   /xmlrpc/foldoc/server.php
Port:   80

foldoc.about

Returns a string containing information about FOLDOC and the web service interface.

foldoc.searchEntries

Accepts a string (the search term) and returns an array of names of entries containing that term (up to a limit of 1000).

foldoc.getEntry

Accepts a string (the name of an entry) and returns a struct representing that entry.

foldoc.listCategories

Returns a struct with a list of all of the categories in the dictionary along with the number of entries in each category.

foldoc.listEntriesInCategory

Accepts a string (the category) and returns an array of entry titles that belong to the category.