Using Google Text to Speech API – PHP

Another nice post from Amit Agarwal.

The following snippet of PHP code is responsible for the conversion while the MP3 files are cached to reduce requests to Google Translation servers.

<?php

// Convert Words (text) to Speech (MP3)
// ------------------------------------

// Google Translate API cannot handle strings > 100 characters
   $words = substr($_GET['words'], 0, 100);

// Replace the non-alphanumeric characters 
// The spaces in the sentence are replaced with the Plus symbol
   $words = urlencode($_GET['words']);

// Name of the MP3 file generated using the MD5 hash
   $file  = md5($words);
  
// Save the MP3 file in this folder with the .mp3 extension 
   $file = "audio/" . $file . ".mp3";

// If the MP3 file exists, do not create a new request
   if (!file_exists($file)) {
     $mp3 = file_get_contents(
        'http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=' . $words;
     file_put_contents($file, $mp3);
   }
?>

// Embed the MP3 file using the AUDIO tag of HTML5
<audio controls="controls" autoplay="autoplay">
  <source src="<? echo $file; ?>" type="audio/mp3" />
</audio>