It finally rained here in Phoenix yesterday after almost 150 days without rain. Once it started to come down, it didn’t let up until well after nightfall.

Since it was raining, I figured I’d stay in and work on something just for fun; a project that I would never normally work on because it doesn’t pay the bills. As I mentioned before in a previous post, I’m definitely not a programmer but I do enjoy figuring things out first-hand and on my own. To me programming is like solving a complex puzzle; even though I do get frustrated and lost frequently, I still enjoy it.

Anyway, awhile back I made a note in my scratchpad to play around with Yahoo’s Web Services API, but I haven’t had much time recently to sit down and actually focus long enough to learn. The easiest way for me to learn how to do something is to think of a project, real or fictional, and work towards creating my vision.

The project I decided on was to build a simple local search engine using Yahoo’s local search API. I started with the PHP version of the Yahoo Search Web Services SDK, version 1.2. The first example I opened was just a query text input with a select box for toggling between the available services, which are web, local, news, video, and image search. It served as a perfect starting point for the application. I searched the web and found a few great articles explaining how to work with the local services API, but thankfully the documentation provided by Yahoo solved just about every issue I ran into.

So, after about eight hours of watching movies/working I had a site up and running. I had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and now have my very own little local search engine. Now back to work that actually brings in the dough…