I am looking to write a system which allows for easy implementation and future development as well as can run on multiple platforms. The website system acts as a middle man. The idea is that it is a platform which can easy be tapped into by simply sending it tokens/query strings and receive data back, given appropriate authentication and what not. The old way of approaching this was Java/C++ socket programming because it could be cross compiled on many platforms. I want to stay away from writing a whole socket driven client/server system.
The idea is that you pass a PHP or ASP page a number of GET strings (or POST if possible) and it will give you back an XML file which holds the data you have requested. So for instance
myPage.php?_auth=7ddf32e17a6ac5ce04a8ecbf782ca509&_REQUEST=BelgianWaffle
The issue at hand is that I have no idea if this is even possible with PHP/ASP.NET or if it is, where to start looking (Tried a few terms with google, didn’t come up with anything).
I know twitter and facebook have similar systems so that remote website can post stuff remotely.
It is certainly possible. In fact, what you’ve described is basically a web service. You could start here: ASP.NET Web Services Tutorial
Another tutorial in video: [How Do I:] Create and Call a Simple Web Service in ASP.Net