For Bespoke websites there isn’t a one click plug-in but there is a super easy to use Bot database called BotScout with an API that only requires a key and CURL.

Botscout is compatible a range of off the shelf PHP systems such as PHPBB.

The following function will return

• 0 = Not a bot
• 1 = Is a bot
• 2 = Failed to check for some reason

function testSpam($XIP,$XUSER,$XMAIL){  /// IP,username,email
$botdata='';
$APIKEY = 'PxX19wq5uJWiIL8'; // your optional API key
$XMAIL =urlencode($XMAIL); // make the url compliant with urlencode()
$apiquery = "http://botscout.com/test/?multi&mail=$XMAIL&ip=$XIP&key=$APIKEY"; // testing for an email address and IP

if(function_exists('file_get_contents')){
$returned_data = file_get_contents($apiquery);    // Use file_get_contents
}else{
$ch = curl_init($apiquery);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$returned_data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
}

if($returned_data==''){// sanity check
return 2;
}

$botdata = explode('|', $returned_data); // take the returned value and parse it (standard API, not XML)

if(substr($returned_data, 0,1) == '!'){// if the first character is an exclamation mark, an error has occurred
return 2;
}

if($botdata[3] > 0 || $botdata[5] > 0){  /// it must be spam bot
return 1;
}else{
return 0;
}

}

This example will use the built in SimpleXML functions which come with PHP5, this is a much faster and easier way to using alternative readers such as simplePie or anything else you might come across. As far as it goes I don’t think SimpleXML gets enough coverage so I am happy to put it to some use for this example.

Keeping it basic

<?php

$xml = simplexml_load_file(“http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/adi182.xml?count=2″);
if($xml){
echo ‘<h3><a href=”http://www.twitter.com/adi182″>Latest Tweets</a></h3>
<ul>’;
foreach($xml->status as $tweet){
$description = $tweet->text;
echo ‘<li>’.$description.’</li>’;
}
echo ‘ </ul>’;
}
?>

So there you have it, the super simple example on putting a Twiter feed on your website.

To begin with I am going to go through how to use the Charts Basics API from Google. This is an extremely easy one to start off with as you don’t require an API key or to install anything, you don’t even need a dynamic server side script to get some nice results.

For this example I am going to jazz it up with a bit of PHP using an associative array but you can easily replace this with a database or XML feed.

To call a chart we use the query string linking to the API which will end up looking something like this.

<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=250x100&amp;chd=t:10,80,35,10&amp;cht=lc&amp;chl=wk1|wk2|wk3|wk4"
alt="Sample chart" />

To generate this dynamicaly I used the following code

$arr = array();

$arr['Jan']['wk1'] = 10;
$arr['Jan']['wk2'] = 80;
$arr['Jan']['wk3'] = 35;
$arr['Jan']['wk4'] = 10;

$chart= 'http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?';
$chartsize = 'chs=250x100';
$type = "cht=lc";
$vals = 'chd=t:';
$keys = 'chl=';
$alt = "January";

foreach( $arr['Jan'] as $key => $value){
	$vals .= $value.',';
	$keys .= $key.'|';
	}

And Lastly to pull all the code together.

<img src="<? echo $chart;?>
<? echo $chartsize;?>
&amp;<? echo substr("$vals", 0, -1);?>
&amp;<? echo $type;?>
&amp;<? echo substr("$keys", 0, -1);?>"
alt="Sample chart" />

To develop this example further use the official documentation available here Google Chart Basic