Layered Programatical API Framework for

Real-Time Mobile Social Network

N.T.G.K. Padmabandu, P.A.I.U. Amarasekera, H.A.C.M. Hewagama, M.N. Dheerasinghe and L. Rupasinghe

Abstract— Mobile social networking is one of the most emerging concepts in the IT industry. Even though the internet is piling up

with social networking sites each day, with the large number of mobile devices being available in the market today, not only the

demand for the mobile application development has become very high but a huge requirement for mobile social networks has also

taken place. Real-time social networking which is the next level of social networking will open its doors to the community in the very

near future. This will be a huge leap in the IT industry that will enhance the lifestyle of the mobile users. Even though there is a huge

demand for development of real-time social networking applications, a proper framework to develop such applications is not yet

available. Therefore the objective of the Layered Programatical Application Programming Interface (API) Framework for Real-time

Mobile Social Network is to keep an initial step in providing an API framework to support the development of real-time mobile social

networking applications. This framwork consists of four main modules which are operating on different layers. Thus far, this is

capable of supporting mobile application development which perform match making based on Myers and Briggs and Big Five

personality models much efficiently and thereby increase the application developer’s productivity.

Keywords— Mobile, Social Networking, Android, Real- time,

Profile Matching, API Framework

I. INTRODUCTION

With the invention of smart phones, other portable devices

and vast usage of them, mobile social networking has become

an emerging concept in the IT industry [1]. Thus, a huge

demand for mobile social networking applications has taken

place and of course there are so many such applications

developed in the ad-hoc manner to fulfil the user requirements.

If this mobile social networking application development

could be supported with a proper framework, it was identified

as a useful conception. The Layered Programmatical API

Framework for Real-time Mobile Social Network provides a

framework and application programming interfaces (APIs) for

android developers to develop social networking applications

that perform matchmaking in a real-time environment.

N. T. G. K. Padmabandu was with the Sri Lanka Institute

of Information Technology, Malabe Campus, Malabe,

SriLanka (e-mail: gamesha@gmail.com).

P. A. I. U. Amarasekera is with the Sri Lanka Institute of

Information Technology, Malabe Campus, Malabe, SriLanka

(e-mail: ishara.amarasekera@gmail.com).

H. A. C. M. Hewagama was with the Sri Lanka Institute of

Information Technology, Malabe Campus, Malabe, SriLanka

(e-mail: chamilhewagama@gmail.com).

M. N. Dheerasinghe was with the Sri Lanka Institute of

Information Technology, Malabe Campus, Malabe, SriLanka

(e-mail: mashadheerasinghe@rocketmail.com).

P. L. Rupasinghe is with the Department of Information

Technology, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology,

Malabe Campus, Malabe, SriLanka (e-mail: lakmal.r@sliit.lk).

This reduces the workload by increasing the re-usability

and makes it easier for the developers to develop applications

on top of it. It also helps the android developers to develop the

applications that fulfil the obsessive requirements of the

android users as this concept has become trendy and is about

to lead the application market in the near future.

The existing social network sites mostly focus on making

friends and sharing the information among individuals. But

this framework facilitates the application developers to

develop applications that allow users to find the ideal person

for their business or relationships. Thereby people will not

have to go on seeking the kind of person that they currently

want to deal with, based on the situation. The other most

attentive feature of this system is that, it facilitates the

development of real-time applications. The applications

supported by this framework therefore help individuals to

meet the appropriate person according to their current

requirements and it opens a potential to develop and run these

kinds of applications on a larger number of mobile devices.

The layered programmatical API framework for real-time

mobile social network consists of four main modules; profile

matching, connection management, security management and

storage m anagement as shown in the figure1 below.

It also provides the relevant APIs thus the developers can

develop their own applications using them. The applications

that are developed using this API framework can be varied

and will help users to match their profiles with any other

authorized profile in a specific domain.

This framework is initially deployed on android mobile

operating system as android is the latest and upcoming

technology in the mobile industry. Even from the mobile

developers’ perspective android operating system (OS)

supports for application development more than that of the

other mobile OS and platforms as it is open source.

The main objective of this research is to provide a reusable

framework for mobile application developers to develop real-

time social networking applications where you need

matchmaking features based on Myers and Bgriggs and Big

Five personality models more efficiently. As a result well

developed real-time mobile social networking applications

will be available for the mobile application users and the

workload of the mobile application developers can also be

reduced.

II. BACKGROUND STUDY

Initially a substantial background study was conducted to

draw out the foremost idea for the project. Then it was

identified that the research should be focused on how to

enable real-time social networking features on mobile

devices. Then the research was split into two components,

“mobile operating systems” and “real-time social networking”.

Under the sub research area “mobile operating systems”,

the aim was to find out the best mobile operating system that

would provide the optimum support to implement the

aforementioned concept in the real world, based on the

availability, reliability, cost etc. It was inquired about the

existing real-time social networking applications, how they

were implemented, for how far those applications satisfy the

user requirements etc., under the next sub research area “real-

time social networking”. The outcome of the analysis of these

two areas were that, there is no proper way to develop real-

time social networking applications and if this concept is to be

implemented in the real world, the most appropriate mobile

operating system would be android mobile operating system.

Thereafter the research was focused on to find out the ways

to merge these two components into one. Then it was noticed

the necessity for a programmatical API framework for real-

time social networks. The further research on the newly

discovered area helped to identify four major constituents of

such a framework. Then the research was directed towards

each of those constituents namely, profile matching, real-time

connectivity, data storage and mobile security. The outcome

of each of these research areas helped to design the main

components of the “Layered Programmatical API Framework

for Real-time Mobile Social Network”. The breakdown of the

research components is shown in the figure 2.

During the background study and the research conduct of

each of the main components, it was considered about the

existing, similar projects.

Considering the use of user profile matching in the global

level, the researches have led to providing a matching

framework that is able to consider all the profile attributes.

This framework provides solutions to achieve inter-social

network operations and functionalities. This is used to identify

the same individual in different social networks, analyzing

and matching his user profiles in different networks [2]. User

Profile Matching was used to create design architecture to

maintain location-aware information. In this research user

profile were generated for every users applied terminal and

were used to integrate contextual information about mobile

users and objects/devices in their environment [3].

Social networking in ad-hoc networks of mobile phones

(AdSocial) and social networking experience with sensing the

presence (CenceMe) are two research studies conducted for

mobile social networking that uses communication media

effectively [4] [5]. AdSocial is a software platform supporting

social network applications in ad-hoc networks. AdSocial is

designed to support spontaneous interactions and provide the

basis for running collaborative applications. Some

functionalities of the AdSocial are playing games in a local

area, share calendar information with co-workers etc. The

main feature of AdSocial is its design to run on resource-

constrained mobile devices. The CenceMe system

transparently makes useful inferences from data gathered from

sensors embedded in mobile phones, and exports the resulting

“sensing presence” to social network applications. Layered

Programmatical API Framework for Real-time Mobile Social

network supports social network application with

matchmaking features connected via a unique combination of

global positioning system (GPS) location combined with the

Wi-Fi access point. The main feature of this framework is that

it provides based matching functionalities based on the Big

Five personality model and Myers-Briggs personality model.

Fig. 1. Framework development overview

The Adsocial software platform does not support any location

based features in their social networking applications.

Censeme uses location based functions to view the user’s

physical location presence and this presence is to be mapped.

Layered Programmatical API Framework for Real-time

Mobile Social Network supports location based functions to

identify the available user’s presence into an android

compatible google map. Adsocial software platform mainly

targets symbian mobile operating system whereas Cenceme

targets symbian mobile operating and apple iphone. Layered

Programmatical API Framework for Real-time Mobile Social

Network targets the android mobile operating system.

III. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Based on the research and the background studies

conducted by the research group, the Layered Programmatical

API Framework for Real-time Mobile Social Network was

divided into four major modules as given below in the figure 3.

Connection Management Module

Profile Matching Module

Security Management Module

Storage Management module

These modules were designed to be independent and

loosely coupled modules, thus changes in one module do not

directly affect the functionality of another module. The below

described is the research components, the approach and the

methodologies followed in implanting each of those modules.

A. Connection Management Module

This framework consists of multiple layers. The uppermost

layer is to manage the real-time connectivity and the

communication between users. Since the success of any social

networking experience relies on effective communication

between their users, it is very important to send information to

the right user quickly as possible. In real-time social

networking application development, it is essential for the

programmer to create applications that will have the capacity

to connect to other devices/ networks efficiently. Therefore a

separate module is introduced to manage these types of

wireless communication activities. To achieve real-time

communication within the framework we focused on 3 main

solutions.

To use Wi-Fi ad-hoc network mechanism

To use bluetooth ad-hoc mechanism

To use GPS and general packet radio service (GPRS)

mechanisms

Considering the first option it was found that android

supports Wi-Fi ad-hoc networks only on the newly introduced

android 4.0 platform [6]. More precisely, and quoting from

the android open source project, android uses wpa_supplicant

as the platform interface to the Wi-Fi device. Therefore the

Wi-Fi driver must be compatible with the standard

wpa_supplicant in addition to extensions added to the

supplicant [7]. Because of this reason we needed a solution

that supports earlier versions on android operating system

platforms.

Considering the bluetooth technology, android supports

managing multiple connections but the problem here is the

communication range. The effective communication range

that bluetooth supports is low. The average bluetooth's range

is only 10 meters [8]. This is clearly not sufficient when it

comes to implement a real-time social network mechanism.

Fig. 3. Framework Architecture

Fig. 2. Breakdown of the research components

However the combination of GPS and GPRS was found to

be a clear solution to achieve real-time communication in all

the android platform versions. The GPS functionality will

provide an accurate location of the user while the GPRS

functionality can be used to connect the users and transfer

information among users. Furthermore by using the Wi-Fi

functionality it could identify the nearby Wi-Fi access points

and map it with the location provided by the GPS

functionality to discover users nearby each other.

As a result of the research study a separate module is

created to handle connection management activities within the

framework. This module includes 3 different libraries to

handle GPS activities, Wi-Fi activities and GPRS activities as

shown in figure 4.The GPS library is implemented using the

“android.location” package provided by the android API

whereas the GPRS library is implemented using the

“org.apache.http” package provided by the android API and

the Wi-Fi library is implemented using the “android.net.wifi”

package provided by the android API.

B. Profile Matching Module

The next layer performs the profile matching functionality.

Certain profile for each user has to be created in order to

perform the profile matching. In this framework it supports

profile matching based on Myers & Briggs and Big Five

personality models. The reason to choose a scientifically

proven model to match people is because; the final result has

to be an accurate and an acceptable one by all. Thus this layer

provides a means for the application developer to match

different user profile information using methods that based on

the aforementioned theories. It also consists of methods to

convert the results into a user readable format and find the

best match for the application user.

Discussing further about the profile matching library, it

could be considered as the core of the application platform. It

has methods and functions to examine the similarities and

differences of the individual profiles. And this library also has

pre-defined attributes to hold profile information. In other

words it’s a basic Java class library which has pre-defined

classes to support profile matching. Developers who are

willing to use this framework can create objects from these

classes to implement their applications.

Profile matching is basically achieved via pattern matching

where it checks some sequence of tokens for the presence of

the constituents of some pattern. If this process is clarified

further, considering the Myers and Briggs personality model ;

Myers and Briggs theory or the MBTI (Myyers and Briggs

Traits Indicator ) is a method for understanding personality

and preferred modes of behaving.This model uses a four-scale

structure for identifying and categorizing an individual's

behavioral preferences, based almost entirely on Carl Jung's

theories and his translated descriptive words [9].The four

scale structure describes four behavioral preferences and the

four opposite behavioral preferences of those as shown in the

figure below.

Each person falls into one category in each of the above

four behavioural preference pairs according to his personality

traits and each of those types has unique set of attributes that

describe the personality of the people belong to them. The

combination of all the behavioural preferences belong to one

person, construct his Myyers and Briggs personality

profile.The pattern matching is used in matching such profiles

with each other by separating the characteristics into factors as

given below in the diagram.

Factor1 = Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I)

Factor2 = Sensing (S) or Intuition (N)

Factor3 = Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)

Factor4 = Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

Fig. 4. Overview of the Connection Management Module

Fig. 5. The four scale structure of Myers & Briggs Personality Model

The figure 6 gives a clear idea of the basic profile matching

functionality. Thus, what is finally getting matched is each

person’s personality profile which consists of these 4 factors

with that of another person. It provides a means to carry out

detailed comparisons between data objects. And it will

generate statistical values correspond to the matching

percentages between two objects. Later on it can be concluded

whether those objects match or not by analyzing the

percentage values produced during the comparison process.

C. Security Management Module

Security always plays an important role in any application

development process. Therefore the next layer is designed to

handle the security issues arising when the applications are

developed using this framework. One major security problem

identified was, storing the information securely in a storage

medium and accessing the users’ private information in

various existing social networks such as facebook.

To store the information securely, the most appropriate

method is encrypting them before storing. As this kind of

framework not deals with highly confidential information it

was not necessary to use much complicated security

mechanisms to the storage media. Thus a symmetric kind of

encryption algorithm, based on the advanced encryption

standard is used to do the encryption. This algorithm is

selected considering its fastness and flexibility. The security

management module which is responsible for the functionality

of this layer contains an interface class that must be

implemented by all the encryption algorithm classes. This

facilitates the replacement of the encryption algorithm

whenever it is necessary. Thus, the encryption mechanism can

be used in various places and since it requires only one object

of the algorithm in each place it is implemented using the

singleton design pattern.

This framework is accessing some basic information such

as name, gender and date of birth from the application users’

existing social networks. Currently the OAuth protocol is the

most popular mechanism used in this kind of situations. Here

it is used the OAuth 2.0 specification. Thus the following

steps were followed to accomplish the requirements.

Retrieve Request Token

This includes preparing the OauthConsumer (our

application) with the consumer key by registering

application with a particular OAuthProvider (facebook).

Authorize the request token

This is achieved by notifying the user to accept the request

about letting our application to access his/her basic

information.

Retrieving the access token

In here we receive the access token and it is being stored in

shared preferences.

After these steps the applications developed using this

framework can retrieve the users’ information that needs to do

various activities supported by the framework.

D. Storage Management Module

The bottom layer handles the data used by the applications

that are supported by this framework and it provides all the

necessary data structures to store them. Storage systems used

by this framework can be categorized as shared preferences,

internal storage, external storage, SQLite database and

network connectivity. Using these systems and new

technologies the files, applications and data within this

framework are efficiently managed. This module contains

several handlers to handle different kind of files and data and

perform fast file/data transactions with high accuracy within

the framework.

The primary user informations such as username, password

and profile type are stored in the internal storage of the mobile

phone itself using the SQLite database. It also handles basic

queries such as insert, update, delete, and select. This

facilitates faster transaction of data and thereby increases the

efficiency as it is not needed to connect to the server to

retrieve these primary data.

Since this framework supports development of real-time

social applications, there is an enormous amount of user

information to be handled. Therefore connectivity information

is mainly handled by a web server using PHP programming

language. All the information relevant to the matching

algorithms is stored in the server. Thus when an application

requires a primary data such as username, it can refer the

internal SQLite database/ the mobile database and when an

application needs data stored in the server it requests data

transaction through the connection management module.

The application developers can also make use of shared

preference to store temporary data in the development of their

applications. In this framework shared preferences may be

used in a situation where it requires passing a primitive data

value such as the user personality type, from one activity to

another to generate a certain matching result.

Fig. 6. Profile Matching Functionality

IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

The tangible outcome of the Layered pProgrammatical API

Framework for Real-time Mobile Social Network is a set of

libraries and is available as an open source project.

Application developers can find the relevant libraries,

documents and source codes at googlecode or in sourceforge

under the project name “rasn”. A sample android application

based on “Belbin Team Role Play” theory which demonstrates

the complete functionality of the framework, is also available

in the android app market under the name ”Belbin

Employees”for mobile application users.

Layered Programmatical API Framework for Real-time

Mobile Social Network provides an API framework for the

android developers to develop social networking applications

based on Myers and Briggs and Big Five personality models

to perform real-time matchmaking. This reduces the effort of

the developer by increasing the reusability and makes it easier

for the developers to develop applications on top of it. The

framework is developed on top of android operating system

and it contains the following modules; profile matching,

connection management, security management and storage

management. This helps the android application developers to

develop the applications that fulfil the obsessive requirements

of the android users.

Since this project brings out a novel concept, the

framework is still in the basic stage of it. Therefore there will

be so many future enhancements that could be done to this

framework to make it much more convenient to use. Here are

some suggestions for such future enhancements.

Introduce semantic technology in profile matching process

thus the matching functionality would be much more

intelligent.

Enhance the profile creation and profile matching libraries

by implementing methods to perform profile matching

with other scientifically proven theories and models.

Implement a method to perform the validation for the

standard questionnaires use to obtain the results for Myers

& Briggs and Big Five personality models.

The GPRS library in the connection management module

is using only the apache HttpComponents package. The

future developers can introduce web services to the GPRS

library to improve the performance of the connection

management module.

The Wi-Fi library in the communication module is used

only to get information of the wireless access points and to

initiate and terminate connections between mobile device

and access points. As a further development developers

can introduce the wireless ad-hoc communication

mechanism for this library.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

A special acknowledgment goes to our supervisor Mr.

Lakmal Rupasinghe who supervised and guided us throughout

this research. Without for his support and supervision this

would have not been successful. We also wish to acknowledge

our co-supervisor, Ms. Kalpani Manathunge for her kind

support, attention and ideas she provided in conducting this

research. Another part of this acknowledgement goes to the

Department of Information Technology, Sri Lanka Institute of

Information Technology, for encouraging us as students, to

conduct research on innovative and novel concepts.

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