Building OpenSocial Apps

Transcription

1 Building OpenSocial Apps A Field Guide to Working with the MySpace Platform Chris Cole Chad Russell Jessica Whyte AAddison-Wesley Upper Saddle River, NJ Boston Indianapolis San Francisco New York Toronto Montreal London Munich Paris Madrid Capetown Sydney Tokyo Singapore Mexico City

2 Foreword xvi Acknowledgments About the Authors Introduction xxi xviif xix I: Building Your First MySpace Application 1 Your First MySpace App 3 Creating the App "Hello World" 3 Step 1: Sign Up for a Developer Account Step 2: Create an App 4 Step 3: Enter Your Source Code Installing and Running Your App Getting Basic MySpace Data 9 The Two Concepts That Every Developer Should Know 9 Basic Concepts: Owner and Viewer 9 Basic Concepts: Permissions for Accessing MySpace Data 10 Starting Our Tic-Tac-Toe App 10 Accessing MySpace User Data 11 Accessing Profile Information Using the opensocial.person Object 15 Getting More than Just the Default Profile Data 18 opensocial.dataresponse and opensocial. Responseltem (aka, Using MySpace User Data) 19 Error Handling Getting Additional MySpace Data 29 How to Fetch a Friend List and Make Use of the Data 29 Getting the Friend List Filters and Sorts 31 30

3 Paging 32 Using the Data Fetching Media Photos Albums and Videos 41 Using opensocial.requestpermission and opensocial.haspermission to Check a User's Permission Settings Persisting Information App Data Store Saving and Retrieving Data 48 Refactoring to Build a Local App Data Store Cookies 56 Why You Shouldn't Use Cookies Building the Cookie Jacker App Third-Party Database Storage Communication and Viral Features 67 Using opensocial.requestshareapp to Spread Your App to Other Users 67 Defining requestshareapp 70 Writing the requestshareapp Code Calling requestshareapp The requestshareapp Callback 72 Using opensocial.requestsendmessage to Send Messages and Communications 74 Defining requestsendmessage 75 Writing the requestsendmessage Code Callback in requestsendmessage Getting Your App Listed on the Friend Updates with opensocial.requestcreateactivity Basics 79 Defining opensocial.requestcreateactivity 79 Using the Template System to Create Activities Data Types 80 Reserved Variable Names Aggregation ix

4 Body and Media Items 82 Using the Template Editor to Create Templates Using opensocial.requestcreateactivity Sending Notifications Mashups and External Server Communications Communicating with External Servers Mashups Adding a Feed Reader to Our App 93 Overview of gadgets.io.makerequest Response Structure 97 Handling Partial HTML Content Handling RSS Feed Content Handling XML Content "User's Pick" Feed Reader 98 Setup and Design of the Feed Reader FEED Content Type Handling JSON Content XML Content Type with Parsing TEXT Content Type Adding a Feed Refresh Option Feed Automation Candy Secure Communication with Signed makerequest 111 Adding an Image Search Overview of JSONP Implementing the Image Search Posting Data with a Form Rushing and Fleshing: Expanding Your App and Person-to-Person Game Play 117 Turn-Based Games 117 Design Overview 118 Adding FriendPicker App Data Game Store Supporting Person-to-Person Game Play

5 Adding P2P Game Play Support in the Game Engine 133 Adding User Feedback 135 Fleshing Out P2P Game Logic Finishing and Clearing a Game "Real-Time" Play 146 Advantages and Disadvantages of App Data P2P Play II: Other Ways to Build Apps 8 OAuth and Phoning Home What Is OAuth? OAuth Libraries 154 Setting Up Your Environment When Is OAuth Not OAuth? Secure Phone Home Unsigned GET Request 158 Signed POST Request 162 Testing Your OAuth Implementation Locally 166 Making Real MySpace Requests 169 Spicing Up the Home and Profile Surfaces Using makerequest External Iframe Apps REST APIs How a REST Web Service Is Addressed Setting Up an External Iframe App The Server Code REST API List The Client Code Friends Web Service and Paging The Profile Endpoint Sending Messages Using IFPC 208 Using the 0.7 Container for postto 210 The Friends Response from the REST API xi

6 xii 10 OSML, Gadgets, and the Data Pipeline The Big Picture 213 Gadget XML Data Pipeline OSML 213 Writing a Gadget "Hello World" Gadget Adding a Second Surface to the Gadget Declaring and Using Basic Data Data Pipelining 219 DataContext 220 Data Tags In-Network versus Out-of-Network Data 221 Data Tags os:viewerrequest and os:ownerrequest 222 Data Tag os:peoplerequest 222 Data Tag os:activitiesrequest Data Tag os:datarequest JavaScript Blocks in OSML Apps 225 OpenSocial Markup Language (OSML) Basic Display Tags Remote Content Display Tags Control Flow Tags Putting It Together: OSML Tic-Tac-Toe Setting Up the Gadget Displaying Data Lists Reusing Common Content Working with Data Advanced OSML: Templates, Internationalization, and View Navigation 239 Inline Tag Templates 239 Defining and Using a Tag Template Using Client-Side Templates Working with Subviews Converting Tabs to Subviews

7 HTML Fragment Rendering 248 Adding Content with os:get 248 Adding Targeted Content with myspace:renderrequest 249 Data Listeners 250 Displaying JSON Results with a Data Listener Internationalization and Message Bundles Creating Our First Message Bundle 256 Creating Translations of the Message Bundle Including Translations in an App and Testing Future Directions III: Growth and How to Deal with It 12 App Life Cycle 265 Publishing Your App 265 What's Allowed, or Why So Many Apps Get Rejected 266 Dealing with Rejection 267 Contesting a Rejection 267 Managing Your App 274 Hiding and Deleting an App 274 Making Changes to a Live App (Multiple Versions) 274 Republishing a Live App 275 Changing the App Profile/Landing Page Managing Developers Managing Testers Event Handling Installs and Uninstalls Suspension and Deletion of Your App Performance, Scaling, and Security Performance and Responsiveness What Is Responsive Performance and What Is Scale Performance? 283 Design for Responsiveness xiii

8 xiv Responsive OpenSocial App Performance Guidelines 285 Design for Scale 292 App Guidelines for Internet-Scale Performance Stability and Fault Tolerance Rule 1: Validate Inputs Rule 2: Test OpenSocial DataResponse Objects for Errors 300 Rule 3: Provide Time-Outs and Error Flow 300 Rule 4: Don't Assume That Weird Error Was an Anomaly 300 User and Application Security User Data Security Application Security 301 Hacking and Cracking Marketing and Monetizing 305 Using MySpace to Promote Your App The App Gallery App Profile, or Bringing Out the Bling MySpace's Own MyAds 308 User Base and Viral Spreading Listen to Your Customers Ads Google AdSense Cubics RockYou! Ads Micropayments PayPal Boku Others Interviews with Successful App Developers Dave Westwood: BuddyPoke ( Eugene Park: Flixster (

9 Tom Kincaid: TK's Apps ( Dan Yue: Playdom ( Porting Your App to OpenSocial 0.9 Media Item Support opensocial.album Fetching Albums Fetching Media Items 335 Updating Albums and Media Items Uploading Media Items 340 Simplification of App Data 341 REST APIs References Index xv