Presentation: OpenSocial and Apache Shindig at XING
OpenSocial is a set of JavaScript APIs for developing (social) web applications, called OpenSocial gadgets, that run inside social networks. It is an open-source project initiated by Google, MySpace, Orkut and several other social networks. OpenSocial gadgets interoperable with any social network that supports those APIs via its OpenSocial container.
OpenSocial is a set of APIs for building social applications that run on the web. OpenSocial's goal is to make more apps available to more users, by providing a common API that can be used in many different contexts. Using standard JavaScript and HTML developers can create applications that run on social websites that have implemented the OpenSocial APIs. These websites, known as OpenSocial containers, allow developers to access their social information. They receive a large suite of applications for their users in return.
The OpenSocial APIs expose methods for accessing information about people, their friends, and their data, within the context of a container. This means that when running an application on Orkut, you'll be interacting with your Orkut friends, while running the same application on MySpace lets you interact with your MySpace friends. For more information on the types of information exposed by the OpenSocial API, see the Key concepts section.
Apache Shindig is the reference implementation of an OpenSocial container and is an open source project. There are two Shindig implementations - Java and PHP, where Java implementation is more actively developed and more mature. The latest available OpenSocial implementation covers OpenSocial 0.9 specification and it is used on a handful of social networks which includes XING.
The presentation will include several OpenSocial code samples and a tour through the internals of an OpenSocial container used by over 8 million users.
Contents
- What is OpenSocial?
- OpenSocial container components
- Apache Shindig architecture
- Structure of an OpenSocial container
- Rendering and running an OpenSocial gadget
- RPC and REST protocols
- Writing OpenSocial gadgets
- OpenSocial container in the real world
- State of the art: data pipelining and templates
- The future of OpenSocial
Speaker: Nenad Nikolic
Nenad Nikolic is working in Hamburg at XING AG where he's the technical lead of the OpenSocial project - its implementation and the rollout of OpenSocial 0.9 container. He has over 10 years of professional experience using a variety of technologies (C++ to Python, Java to Groovy) on a variety of projects (from web portals to WiFi network drivers to anti-spam software, completing the circle with social web sites). He is also one of the developers of soapUI, an open-source web services testing tool. With Java platform he has been working since 1998.
Privately, Nenad is interested in Android software development, script languages in the JVM, and real-time web. He comes from Belgrade, Serbia, speaks four languages and will be using his German before a greater audience for the first time.