How do I connect to an external API using Joomla 1.5?

I want to connect to an external API from my joomla website.

The external ap开发者_如何学Pythoni is a reservation system which I would like to view info and update content. They have provided a URL for testing as well as documentation of the various functions available.

Not sure what to do from here. I have built many Joomla components before but never had time to learn XML-RPC and how it works.

I have looked at mastering Joomla 1.5 extensions and framework development but couldn't get what I wanted from it. Any help appreciated.

If you have built MVC components in the past, then the hard part is done. XML-RPC is not all that different from a typical cURL request in that you build a set of parameters that are sent to a remote server that then returns a response. The main difference is that the request and response are formatted in XML. There is a pretty good overview here - http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/luis20010329.php3?print_mode=1

If you want to connect to an external link from your joomla, you can modify the link type (menu item) to "wrapper" (Displays an iframe to wrap an external page or site into Joomla! ), when you are done, in the right side there are some Basic parameters, you can write there the link, and add the width and height to it.