OpenSocial Network Programming [Paperback]

Lynne Grewe (Author)

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Product Details

Paperback: 408 pages
Publisher: Wrox (Mar 27 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0470442220
ISBN-13: 978-0470442227
Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 18.5 x 2.5 cm
Shipping Weight: 567 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,151,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces for Web-based social network applications. As the first book on OpenSocial, this valuable resource discusses the unique area of social networking and the needs and different attributes of social network applications. You?ll get step-by-step instructions for creating OpenSocial applications for multiple platforms and explore application development and deployment using integration technologies like the new Sun Zembly Platform. Plus, you?ll examine newer technologies like the Sun Platform that allows even non-programmers the ability to ?mash up? applications.

From the Back Cover

As a new and exciting platform for creating and deploying social networking applications on multiple networks, OpenSocial is a set of common Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that can be used on MySpace, hi5, imeem, Friendster, Netlog, orkut, and more. This book walks you through the creation of engaging social network applications using OpenSocial, and provides you with a behind-the-scenes look into the creation of applications for the most popular social networks using OpenSocial.

Following an introduction that discusses what a social network application is and how applications can be found in different platforms, you'll discover some of the most popular techniques used for creating both "social" and "viral" applications. You'll gain an understanding of the OpenSocial architecture (including both client and server APIs) and OpenSocial data formats. Packed with code examples and tips and tricks from industry experts, this resource will put you on your way to quickly creating social networking applications with OpenSocial.

What you will learn from this book

How to deploy on multiple containers (social networks)
Ways to make money with social network applications
Issues that surround both front-end and back-end needs
How to develop applications for popular social networks such as MySpace, orkut®, Netlog, Yahoo!, and more
Tips for creating applications that feature different social hooks
Various emerging technologies such as OpenSocial templates, OpenSocial proxied content, and OpenSocial client libraries

Who this book is for
This book is for programmers interested in social network programming with OpenSocial. Familiarity with JavaScript is helpful.

Wrox guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think. Written by programmers for programmers, they provide a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index

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Amazon.com: 3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

4.0 out of 5 stars Good discussion of challenges involved and how to address them in developing viral social networking applications, May 16 2009

By Techie Evan - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: OpenSocial Network Programming (Paperback)

Written by a professor who has collaborated with numerous social networking companies and is a member of the OpenSocial Foundation, this first book on the open source platform aimed at helping developers build social networking applications that can be deployed to multiple networks/containers provides tutorials and advice on how to use the platform's Client- and Server-Side APIs as well as approaches to addressing technical hurdles in the successful development and deployment of such applications. After reading this book, you'll get a good idea of what attributes are common to successful social networking applications, what social networks support OpenSocial and to what extent (for example, many support version 0.8 of the Client API but -- at publication time -- only hi5 supports the RESTful Server-Side API), what tools and architectural designs you can consider using to help you test, monitor, and make your application secure, scalable, and performant. As a bonus, you'll also get good information on emerging technologies from Sun and Yahoo that could take OpenSocial's "write once, deploy everywhere" goal to the next level of convenience.

The book provides plenty of code examples showing you how to use the Javascript Client API but only a few examples of what you can achieve with the RESTful Server-Side APIs and all of them are coded in PHP, a potential negative for some readers (libraries for Java, Ruby, etc are available for the server-side APIs, however). Also, while some of the tips are quite good, many could have benefitted from the use of better or more extended examples than the brief discussions provided (for example, the one on database sharding, an increasingly popular share-nothing architectural approach to data storage and management that's especially relevant to high-traffic websites, is intriguing but discussed only briefly; similarly, the discussion on scalable user interfaces was somewhat short on details and left me wondering about the practicalness of the recommended approach). Finally, a lot of the materials in the book can be found elsewhere easily (if you're willing to spend time finding them). Overall, however, I do think the book provides good value and am giving it a rating of four out of five stars.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Many Words, Little Code, Many Errors but 1st book available on OpenSocial to be fair, Jun 17 2009

By L. Vignals - Published on Amazon.com

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This review is from: OpenSocial Network Programming (Paperback)

OpenSocial is not really simple, even somewhat confusing due to its technology heritage as it kind of got re-purposed from gadgets API to play catch-up with other social application containers. For that reason any book on the subject is welcome. Although to be fair there are only few examples in the book and even less working ones, it took significant changes to get most of the code examples running on just one of the many available OpenSocial containers. If you want to write apps that do more than sending a HelloWorld to a friend you are probably interested in the REST API and server side code with a DB. Unfortunately not much is covered in this book on that subject. It feels like the authors have rushed to get the book out to be the first ones to cover the OpenSocial techno. Don't count on updates of the code from the site, I have downloaded it a few times just to see if they would updated the files. The answer is no, it still has all the same many syntax errors as the printed code. I am clearly disappointed by the book compared to other API related books but at the time of this review it is the only one available on the topic so for that reason I still gave it 2 stars!
## Summary: ## Too Many Words, Not Enough Code, Too Many Errors... but 1st Book Available on OpenSocial to be fair...

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews 3.0 out of 5 stars