PHP code for Bing/Microsoft/Azure translator

Microsoft has yet again changed the API service for the translator api they offer (formerly known as Bing translator, Microsoft Translator, Azure Translator?). It’s now been moved to Azure, and is under the “Cognitive Services” offerings. Maybe it will stay here for more than a couple months before they mess with it again?

I needed to update a PHP app that calls the bing translator API, and couldn’t find anything that did the trick. Prior to the full Azure move, the service has been put under a data market portal, and later the simple basic auth api was updated to use OAuth for security. The latest iteration still uses Oath, but it’s simplified now to the point that all you need to pass is the secret key to get the authorization token – as opposed to previously requiring an app name, some domain scope thing, etc- a lot of moving parts. Now all that is needed to get a token is this:

Option 1: Pass key using header

curl --header 'Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: ' --data "" 'https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/sts/v1.0/issueToken'

Option 2: Pass key using query string parameter
curl --data "" 'https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/sts/v1.0/issueToken?Subscription-Key='

The body of the request is the token you use- so you don’t need to parse a JSON result or anything.

Here is a PHP class you can use with the latest greatest api- Note that this code hits the issuetoken request with every request, the tokens are good for a period of time (30 minutes if I recall) so this code could use caching to only request a new token after it expires. I’ll update this later. Also the code is pretty hackish, needs a lot of cleanup.

Edit the file to with your actual key. Then create an instance of AzureTranslator, set properties for the src and dest languages, and the phrase to translate. Call getTranslateByCurl() and it will return your translated phrase.

class AccessTokenAuthentication {

function getTokens2($clientKey, $authUrl){
try {
//Initialize the Curl Session.
$ch = curl_init();
//Set the Curl URL.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $authUrl . '?Subscription-Key=' . $clientKey);
//Set HTTP POST Request.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, TRUE);
//Set data to POST in HTTP "POST" Operation.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, ""); // $paramArr);
//CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER- TRUE to return the transfer as a string of the return value of curl_exec().
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
//CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER- Set FALSE to stop cURL from verifying the peer's certificate.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
//Execute the cURL session.
$strResponse = curl_exec($ch);
//Get the Error Code returned by Curl.
$curlErrno = curl_errno($ch);
if($curlErrno){
$curlError = curl_error($ch);
throw new Exception($curlError);
}
//Close the Curl Session.
curl_close($ch);
return $strResponse ;
} catch (Exception $e) {
return ""; // echo "Exception-".$e->getMessage();
}
}
}

/*
* Class:AzureTranslator
*
* Processing the translator request.
*/
Class AzureTranslator {

private $clientSecret = "";
private $authUrl = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/sts/v1.0/issueToken";
private $phrase = null;
private $sourceLang = "";
private $targetLang = "";

public function setPhrase ($phrase = "")
{
$this->phrase = "";
if (!empty($phrase))
$this->phrase = trim($phrase);
}

public function setSourceLang ($sLang = "")
{
$this->sourceLang = "";
if (!empty($sLang))
$this->sourceLang = trim($sLang);
}

public function setTargetLang ($tLang = "")
{
$this->targetLang = "";
if (!empty($tLang))
$this->targetLang = trim($tLang);
}

public function getTranslateByCurl()
{
try {

//Create the AccessTokenAuthentication object.
$authObj = new AccessTokenAuthentication();

$accessToken = $authObj->getTokens2($this->clientSecret, $this->authUrl);
//Create the authorization Header string.
$authHeader = "Authorization: Bearer ". $accessToken;

$contentType = 'text/plain';
$category = 'general';

$params = "text=".urlencode($this->phrase)."&to=".$this->targetLang."&from=".$this->sourceLang;

$translateUrl = "http://api.microsofttranslator.com/v2/Http.svc/Translate?$params";

//Get the curlResponse.
$curlResponse = $this->curlRequest($translateUrl, $authHeader);

//Interprets a string of XML into an object.
$xmlObj = simplexml_load_string($curlResponse);
foreach((array)$xmlObj[0] as $val){
$translatedStr = $val;
}

return $translatedStr;
//return $curlResponse;

} catch (Exception $e) {
return "";
//return $e->getMessage();
}
}

/*
* Create and execute the HTTP CURL request.
*
* @param string $url HTTP Url.
* @param string $authHeader Authorization Header string.
* @param string $postData Data to post.
*
* @return string.
*
*/
function curlRequest($url, $authHeader, $postData=''){
//Initialize the Curl Session.
$ch = curl_init();
//Set the Curl url.
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
//Set the HTTP HEADER Fields.
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array($authHeader,"Content-Type: text/xml"));
//CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER- TRUE to return the transfer as a string of the return value of curl_exec().
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
//CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER- Set FALSE to stop cURL from verifying the peer's certificate.
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, False);
if($postData) {
//Set HTTP POST Request.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, TRUE);
//Set data to POST in HTTP "POST" Operation.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postData);
}
//Execute the cURL session.
$curlResponse = curl_exec($ch);
//Get the Error Code returned by Curl.
$curlErrno = curl_errno($ch);
if ($curlErrno) {
$curlError = curl_error($ch);
throw new Exception($curlError);
}
//Close a cURL session.
curl_close($ch);
return $curlResponse;
}
}