How to call web services/API?

[togFox]

I'd like to call an API that is "out there" so I can display live data on my Love2D screen. Think of a stock ticker or live hockey score updates. Here is an example:

https://rapidapi.com/asepscareer/api/yahoo-finance97

How would I invoke something like that in Love/LUA? Is POST within the realms of possibility? Would I need FFI? How do I get started on something like this? Thanks.

[MrFariator]

Love2d provides luasocket out of the box, and you can use it to implement some simple POST requests. From the reference, the request page has relevant details, and there are fair few luasocket tutorials out there. The main catch is that it may be wise to run the networking requests on a separate thread (in case of a blocking operation), so not to block the main thread execution.

[pgimeno]

I think the main catch is actually that https is not supported.

[MrFariator]

Right, I forgot about https specifically. Of course, that depends on if you can just roll with http or not.

[zorg]

I think the main catch is actually that https is not supported.

yet*

[togFox]

So it seems all currency exchange API's use https. Is that not gunna work with Love2D? Are there https libraries I should google for? Should I mess about with this: https://github.com/love2d/lua-https

Or this: https://github.com/daurnimator/lua-http (supports https 1.2)

I'll keep googling for a http but all the sites I've seen have an identical look and feel (same company - same API - same https) but just researching this alone is educational.

Edit: this site offers http: http://api.nbp.pl/en.html

and by typing into a browser: http://api.nbp.pl/api/exchangerates/tables/a/

I get the following xml:

Code: Select all

<ArrayOfExchangeRatesTable>
<ExchangeRatesTable>
<Table>A</Table>
<No>195/A/NBP/2022</No>
<EffectiveDate>2022-10-07</EffectiveDate>
<Rates>
<Rate>
<Currency>bat (Tajlandia)</Currency>
<Code>THB</Code>
<Mid>0.1326</Mid>
</Rate>
<Rate>
<Currency>dolar amerykański</Currency>
<Code>USD</Code>
<Mid>4.9588</Mid>
</Rate>
...
...

I think this is enough for me to play and learn.

[dusoft]

So it seems all currency exchange API's use https. Is that not gunna work with Love2D? Are there https libraries I should google for? Should I mess about with this: https://github.com/love2d/lua-https

Or this: https://github.com/daurnimator/lua-http (supports https 1.2)

I'll keep googling for a http but all the sites I've seen have an identical look and feel (same company - same API - same https) but just researching this alone is educational.
[snip...]

You could use CURL binding https://github.com/Lua-cURL/Lua-cURLv3 instead