CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpjavascriptdatabase
user843939
user843939

Reputation:

making database available to other servers

OK, I'm not entirely clear how to ask this question, so please feel free to edit it.

Here's the idea.

I have a database that I think may be useful to webmasters. I would like to offer, as a paid service, the inclusion of some interface with the database. I want my database to dynamically populate drop-down option menus.

I understand how to do it when the database, requesting html/javascript and the processing php are all on the same server.

I'm not so sure whether this can be done if the requesting html html/javascript are on the webmaster's server, and the processing phps and the database are on my server.

I'm also not sure how to make sure that only authorized users can hook up to my database.

At this point, I am looking for a macro-level solution, not the code implementation.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 72

Answers (3)

Justin ᚅᚔᚈᚄᚒᚔ
Justin ᚅᚔᚈᚄᚒᚔ

Reputation: 15369

My approach to this would be to write a web service (whether SOAP, XMLRPC or REST) that requires the users to submit an API key with each request. The service would validate the key, talk to the database, and return results to the user in some standard format. The API key would (obviously) be unique for each user/subscription.

Upvotes: 1

Devin Garner
Devin Garner

Reputation: 1416

You could return the results of the request to the php script in JSONP format (json with padding). That allows the javascript to execute a callback method on the original webpage even though the service is on another domain.

You'd probably need some way of tracking state in your php code to determine if they're authenticated. One way would be to have the author of the 3rd-party webpage send an authentication token during their body onload to your php script. You could then mark the IP address of the client as "authenticated" and then all other requests from that same IP would return a valid result. Requests from a non-authenticated IP could return an error message.

IPs are obviously not unique in our world of NAT (network address translation). If you want it to be more fool-proof, you could generate your own token inside the PHP & send it back from the request to authenticate. The 3rd-party site would store that token in memory (or a cookie) & send it back to you on every request. You'd use that token as the proof of authentication on future requests, rather than the IP. This is basically how most servers do Sessions, PHP probably has something built in for that.

Upvotes: 0

Raptor
Raptor

Reputation: 54248

Instead of directly connecting to remote database server, I suggest you to create a simple web service (such as a PHP page grabbing information from database, based on the request stated in query string you specified ) to generate XML / JSON for your web page.

Your web page, containing your drop down box, can make an AJAX request to fetch the XML & parse for data. With this mechanism, security problem caused by exposing the database can be avoided.

Upvotes: 2

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