Thursday, June 26, 2014

SpokenData API - File upload

SpokenData API allows developers to easily add new recordings to their media library. You can either pass a media file URL or you can upload the whole file using the HTTP PUT method that was recently implemented into SpokenData. This post will demonstrate the second option - uploading a file through the SpokenData API call.



So, how does it work? Each SpokenData API function is composed of SpokenData base API url, USER-ID, API-TOKEN and the name of the function.

SpokenData API url:http://spokendata.com/api
USER-ID: different for each user, available for signed-in at http://spokendata/api
API-TOKEN: different for each user, available for signed-in at http://spokendata/api
API function: recording/put

If we concatenate the above values, we get the API call url. It may look like this:
http://spokendata.com/api/18/br3sp59a2it7fig94jdtbt3p9ife5qpx39fd8npp/recording/put

Each API call can have parameters. When uploading a new file through API, you need to enter the recording filename and the language for automatic speech processing. So basically, you will end up with a URL looking like this:
http://spokendata.com/api/18/br3sp59a2it7fig94jdtbt3p9ife5qpx39fd8npp/recording/put?filename=audio.mp3&language=english

Basically, there are also available other parameters you can read about in the SpokenData API documentation. When you call the above url, don't forget to put the file content.

Here is a code example that uploads an MP3 file using the HTTP PUT method to SpokenData.
<?php
$fileToUpload = 'd:/audio.mp3';
$url = 'http://spokendata.com/api/18/br3sp59a2it7fig94jdtbt3p9ife5qpx39fd8npp/recording/put?filename=audio.mp3&language=english';

$file = fopen($fileToUpload, "rb");
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, '1');
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Expect: '));
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_PUT, 1);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_INFILE, $file);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_INFILESIZE, filesize($fileToUpload));

$response = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl); 
header ("Content-Type:text/xml");
echo $response;

The server responds in XML. Here is an example response of the above script.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf8"?>
<data>
<message>New media file &quot;audio.mp3&quot; was successfully added.</message>
<recording id="1373"></recording>
</data>

As you can see, the file audio.mp3 was successfully added and assigned the recording id = 1373.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Tagging

Every registered user has a set of 6 tags. Each tag is marked with a different color and can have a title. Tags come greatly in handy when you want to filter your recordings. For example, you have plenty of recordings and you work on their transcriptions. If you are happy with the transcription, you mark the recording with a tag titled done. As tags are displayed on the top of recording thumbnails, you will immediately spot those recordings which do not need to be transcribed anymore.

Tag titles can be changed at any time. Tagging is allowed on your dashboard or in the transcription editing mode.