How to create a widget in php & javascript?

Question

I have a website for a client offering information from a database. But other websites want to show that information in their website, so my client ask me for it.

Since the begining I thought it might be something similar to the twitter widget. As I want to give out a code similar to this:

<script src="http://widgets.twimg.com/j/2/widget.js"></script>
<script>
new TWTR.Widget({ ......

And other websites will show the information from my database.

But I cannot find a exactly example, I found this: http://tutorialzine.com/2010/03/who-is-online-widget-php-mysql-jquery/

But it is not exactly what I want.

My deployment is the following: In the server I've got a mySQL database and a website, I would like to create php and javascript code (or even jquery, but I'm not very expert with it) so other website could incorporate the information from the database in a secure mode.

Could anybody give a hint?

Answer 1

You'll need a RESTful service on your server which other sites can ping. You will use an AJAX request to get the information from that service.

The big piece of this for you will be creating a JavaScript object that has all the functionality you want. It is much easier to give people directions on how to use your REST API and let them implement it via AJAX on their own pages. If you really do want a full widget, you'll want to check out a lot of things. First is closures in JS to ensure you don't conflict with any of their variables. Also make sure you are good at developing cross-browser Javascript independent of libraries. And finally, you'll want to make sure your server is configured for cross-domain AJAX requests. Again, my recommendation is to set up a REST API for them, and let them do the dirty work.