OpenSocial for Students

By Rohit Ghatol

From

Pune Google Technology User Group

http://pune-gtug.blogspot.com

What is Pune-GTUG?

GTUG stands for Google Technology User Group

http://pune-gtug.blogspot.com

What is OpenSocial?

What is OpenSocial?

OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds.

Before we answer that lets understand what social networking sites do?

Can you name some of the social networking sites?

Social Networking Sites

What do you do on these sites?

We socialize and do some activity on these sites!

What do you do on these sites?

We connect and do some activity on these sites!

Music

What do you do on these sites?

We connect and do some activity on these sites!

Scrapbook

What do you do on these sites?

We connect and do some activity on these sites!

Professional Recommendations

What do you do on these sites?

We socialize and do some activity on these sites!

And so on…..

Jaiku’s 5 rules for social networks

1. What is your object?

2. What are your verbs?

3. How can people share the objects?

4. What is the gift in the invitation?

5. Are you charging the publishers or the spectators?

How do we socialize objectsonline

without having to create yetanother social network?

OpenSocial

A common open set of APIs for building social applications across

multiple sites

This is NOT GoogleSocial. It’s about making the Web more social,

not just Google.

Standards-based

html+javascript+REST+OAuth

Lets see some examples

Back to the original Question

What is OpenSocial?

What is OpenSocial?

When you write an Application for a OpenSocial Container (e.g Orkut) it – gives you access to your Friends

What is OpenSocial?

When you write an Application for a OpenSocial Container (e.g Orkut) it – gives you access to your Friends– allows you to read write updates (Activity Stream)

What is OpenSocial?

When you write an Application for a OpenSocial Container (e.g Orkut) it – gives you access to your Friends– allows you to read write updates (Activity Stream)– allows you to store and share some information

with your friends

What is OpenSocial?

It turns sites like Orkut into a platform for developers to write more applications and allows users to install these on top of Orkut

So along with scrapping you can now interact with your friends in a number of ways. Chat with them, play games with them, plan your hangout places, all without leaving Orkut.

Roles in OpenSocial

• Container – Sites which have OpenSocial Features like Orkut

• User – Who use these sites

• Developer – Who develop applications for OpenSocial Sites

Code Samples

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<Module>

<ModulePrefs title="Hello World!">

<Require feature="opensocial-0.8" />

</ModulePrefs>

<Content type="html">

<h1>Hello World</h1>

</Content>

</Module>

Code Samples

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<Module>

<ModulePrefs title="Hello World!">

<Require feature="opensocial-0.8" />

</ModulePrefs>

<Content type="html">

<!– Your HTML Javascript goes here -->

</Content>

</Module>

Code Samples

function loadFriends() {

var req = opensocial.newDataRequest(); //Create a request to orkut

req.add(req.newFetchPersonRequest(opensocial.IdSpec.PersonId.VIEWER), 'viewer'); //Tell I want to get the Viewer

req.add(req.newFetchPeopleRequest(opensocial.newIdSpec({ "userId" : "VIEWER", "groupId" : "FRIENDS" });), 'viewerFriends');//Tell I want to get the Viewer’s Friends

req.send(onLoadFriends);

}

Code Samples

function onLoadFriends(data) {

var viewer = data.get('viewer').getData();

var viewerFriends = data.get('viewerFriends').getData();

html = new Array();

html.push('<ul>');

viewerFriends.each(function(person) {

if (person.getId()) {

html.push('<li>' + person.getDisplayName() + "</li>");

}

});

html.push('</ul>');

document.getElementById('friends').innerHTML = html.join('');

}

Why OpenSocial?

• Developer : Distribution to 275 Million people• Containers : More Features• User : More Applications

Why OpenSocial?

When you develop an application-• How do you bring people to your application?

OR

• Do you take your application to people?

Questions?

?

Links

• OpenSocial - http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

References

• OpenSocial Presentation from Google IO 2008• OpenSocial Site at code.google.com

Disclaimer

• The social networking site Orkut is used in many slides, just for the reason, that the audience is very familiar with this site.

• This presentation has no indentation to highlight one social networking site over other