XML-RPC pinging (google and others)
I am trying to ping (SEO tactic called "ping" is used for new content to get robots index it faster) Google in PHP. Only thing I know is that I need to send my request to following url: http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
Probably I can use PHP XML-RPC functions. I don't know how to format my request and which method to use.
Answer
As far as you're concerned to do the XML-RPC request (Example #1).
If you follow the specification of a pingback, it would look like this:
$sourceURI = 'http://example.com/';
$targetURI = 'http://example.com/';
$service = 'http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2';
$request = xmlrpc_encode_request("pingback.ping", array($sourceURI, $targetURI));
$context = stream_context_create(array('http' => array(
'method' => "POST",
'header' => "Content-Type: text/xml",
'content' => $request
)));
$file = file_get_contents($service, false, $context);
$response = xmlrpc_decode($file);
if ($response && xmlrpc_is_fault($response)) {
trigger_error("xmlrpc: $response[faultString] ($response[faultCode])");
} else {
print_r($response);
}
Which would give you the following output:
Array
(
[flerror] =>
[message] => Thanks for the ping.
)
Generally, if you don't know which method you call, you can also try XML-RPC Introspection - but not all XML-RPC servers offer that.
You asked in a comment:
According to specs,
$targetURIshould be: "The target of the link on the source site. This SHOULD be a pingback-enabled page". How can I make pingback enabled page, or more important, what is that actually?
A pingback enabled site is a website that announces an XML-RPC pinbback service as well. That's done with the HTMl <link> element in the <head> section. Example:
<link rel="pingback" href="http://hakre.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php" />
The href points to an XML-RPC endpoint that has the pingback.ping method available.
Or it's done by sending a specifc HTTP response header:
X-Pingback: http://charlie.example.com/pingback/xmlrpc
See pingback-enabled resource.
So if you ping others, others should be able to ping you, too.