Drupal 7 Module Development: API content callback

espn_news.module

<?php

  /**
   * Custom API content callback.
   *
   * This callback is a custom callback to get ESPN news data.
   * Here we request the data, preprocesses it and creates a list of news. The 
   * array '$items' contains all the news, we'll display it as a unordered list
   * later on.
   *
   * drupal_http_request: https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/includes!common.inc/function/drupal_http_request/7
   * drupal_json_decode: https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/includes!common.inc/function/drupal_json_decode/7
   */
  function espn_news_api_content() {

    // API path.
    $api_url = 'http://api.espn.com/v1/sports/news/';
    // Query parameters.
    $query = $api_url . '?apikey=' . variable_get('espn_news_api_key') . '&limit=5';
    // Query options.
    $options = array(
      'method' => 'GET',
      'timeout' => 5,
      'headers' => array(
        'Content-Type' => 'application/json; charset=utf-8',
      ),
    );

    // Request data.
    $request = drupal_http_request($query);

    // Convert data into associative array.
    $result = drupal_json_decode($request->data);

    // Loop through news.
    foreach($result['headlines'] as $news) {

      // Raw data.
      $news_id = $news['id'];
      $news_headline = $news['headline'];
      $news_article_href = $news['links']['web']['href'];
      $news_teaser = $news['linkText'];
      $news_description = $news['description'];
      $news_last_modified = $news['lastModified'];
      // Process data.
      $news_datetime = date('H:i', strtotime($news_last_modified));
      $news_headline_link = l($news_headline, $news_article_href, $option = array(
        'attributes' => array(
          'class' => 'headline_href',
          'target' => '_blank',
        ),
      ));

      // Create li item with content.
      $items[] = array(
        'data' => '<h3 class="headline">' . $news_headline_link . '</h3>' .
          '<span class="datetime">' . $news_datetime . '</span>' .
          '<div class="teaser"><p>' . $news_teaser . '</p></div>' .
          '<div class="description"><p>' . $news_description . '</p></div>',
        'id' => 'news-' . $news_id,
      );

    }

    return $items;
  }