Building OpenSocial Apps: A Field Guide to Working with the MySpace Platform
“The authors did a great job covering the various ins and outs of OpenSocial, and especially the specific MySpace quirks. If you are a new social networking application developer or even someone who just wants to write better OpenSocial Apps, then this book has what you are looking for.”\ –Cassandra Doll, Software Engineer, Google\ The Insider’s Guide to Writing OpenSocial Applications for MySpace–and Beyond!\ When you write OpenSocial applications for MySpace, you can reach millions of users...
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“The authors did a great job covering the various ins and outs of OpenSocial, and especially the specific MySpace quirks. If you are a new social networking application developer or even someone who just wants to write better OpenSocial Apps, then this book has what you are looking for.”–Cassandra Doll, Software Engineer, GoogleThe Insider’s Guide to Writing OpenSocial Applications for MySpace–and Beyond!When you write OpenSocial applications for MySpace, you can reach millions of users overnight. Building OpenSocial Apps shows you how, one step at a time. Whether you’re building casual widgets or feature-rich, professional applications, this book will teach you everything you need to know.The authors are the leading experts on OpenSocial and MySpace and have personally helped construct the MySpace platform and OpenSocial standards. In this indispensable book, they walk you through the entire process of building apps, from signing up through building complex apps that can scale to thousands of users and interoperate on more than fifty social networks, such as Hi5, Orkut, and LinkedIn. They demonstrate today’s best practices for building OpenSocial applications and present dozens of tips for leveraging both MySpace and OpenSocial to their fullest. Coverage includes Installing and working with the MySpace Developer Platform Retrieving, parsing, and displaying user data, friend lists, and photos Sending App invitations and notifications Building mashups that communicate with third-party web services Marketing your App and building your user base Designing for performance, scalability, and fault tolerance Securing MySpace and OpenSocial apps, and protecting users’ privacy Building apps that display ads and accept micropaymentsA companion web site (opensocialtictactoe.googlecode.com) includes an extensive library of downloadable source code and other support materials.
Foreword xviAcknowledgments xviiiAbout the Authors xixIntroduction xxiPart I: Building Your First MySpace ApplicationChapter 1: Your First MySpace App 3Creating the App–“Hello World” 3Installing and Running Your App 7Summary 7Chapter 2: Getting Basic MySpace Data 9The Two Concepts That Every Developer Should Know 9MySpace Data 10Starting Our Tic-Tac-Toe App 10Error Handling 24Summary 27Chapter 3: Getting Additional MySpace Data 29How to Fetch a Friend List and Make Use of the Data 29Fetching Media 39Using opensocial.requestPermission and opensocial.hasPermission to Check a User’s Permission Settings 43Summary 45Chapter 4: Persisting Information 47App Data Store 47Cookies 56Third-Party Database Storage 64Summary 65Chapter 5: Communication and Viral Features 67Using opensocial.requestShareApp to Spread Your App to Other Users 67Using opensocial.requestSendMessage to Send Messages and Communications 74Getting Your App Listed on the Friend Updates with opensocial.requestCreateActivity Basics 79Sending Notifications 88Summary 90Chapter 6: Mashups and External Server Communications 91Communicating with External Servers 91Mashups 92Adding a Feed Reader to Our App 93Adding an Image Search 112Posting Data with a Form 114Summary 114Chapter 7: Flushing and Fleshing: Expanding Your App and Person-to-Person Game Play 117Turn-Based Games 117Supporting Person-to-Person Game Play 133Finishing and Clearing a Game 144“Real-Time” Play 146Advantages and Disadvantages ofApp Data P2P Play 148Summary 148Part II: Other Ways to Build AppsChapter 8: OAuth and Phoning Home 153What Is OAuth? 153Secure Phone Home 157Spicing Up the Home and Profile Surfaces Using makeRequest 173Summary 174Chapter 9: External Iframe Apps 177REST APIs 178Sending Messages Using IFPC 208Summary 212Chapter 10: OSML, Gadgets, and the Data Pipeline 213The Big Picture 213Writing a Gadget 214OpenSocial Markup Language (OSML) 225Putting It Together: OSML Tic-Tac-Toe 226Summary 238Chapter 11: Advanced OSML: Templates, Internationalization, and View Navigation 239Inline Tag Templates 239Working with Subviews 245HTML Fragment Rendering 248Data Listeners 250Internationalization and Message Bundles 255Future Directions 260Summary 261Part III: Growth and How to Deal with ItChapter 12: App Life Cycle 265Publishing Your App 265Managing Your App 274Managing Developers 279Suspension and Deletion of Your App 280Summary 281Chapter 13: Performance, Scaling, and Security 283Performance and Responsiveness 283Design for Scale 292Stability and Fault Tolerance 299User and Application Security 300Summary 303Chapter 14: Marketing and Monetizing 305Using MySpace to Promote Your App 306User Base and Viral Spreading 309Ads 311Micropayments 316Interviews with Successful App Developers 318Summary 326Chapter 15: Porting Your App to OpenSocial 0.9 329Media Item Support 330Simplification of App Data 341REST APIs 343Summary 348References 351Index 355
