Blogging Roller

Roy Fielding: I am getting frustrated by the number of people calling any HTTP-based interface a REST API. Today's example is the SocialSite REST API. That is RPC. It screams RPC. There is so much coupling on display that it should be given an X rating.

Ouch! As the author of the torrid (and pretty rough) Project SocialSite Proposal: Finalize Web Services APIs proposal that Roy calls out to sharply, I'd like to point of that, as I explained in a recent post, Project SocialSite is simply implementing and extending the OpenSocial API. OpenSocial includes both a JSON-RPC API and a REST API. SocialSite implements and extends them both. I never meant to imply that the JSON-RPC API is RESTful (and neither did the authors of the OpenSocial specifications). In fact, I renamed the proposal from "Finalize REST APIs" to "Finalize Web Services APIs" after I realized that OpenSocial would come in both flavors.

The proposal that I wrote outlined a way for Project SocialSite to hook into Apache Shindig (incubating), the Reference Implementation of OpenSocial,implement a couple of Shindig interfaces and thus gain support for both the OpenSocial REST API and the OpenSocial JSON-RPC API. The OpenSocial REST API does claim to be RESTful and I believe it is; it's based on AtomPub but includes some extensions for providing generic XML and JSON representations in addition to Atom format. The Project SocialSite REST API will extend that and will also be RESTful.

Today, I'm going to wrap up the summary of the Project SocialSite Web Services that I started in Part 1 of this series. I'll cover the new APIs we've added for managing Gadgets, for Messaging and for Search. These are not quite as solid as the other services I've covered; they're still in-flux and under development. [Read More]

I'm on SocialSite blog patrol this week, which means that I need to post interesting stuff at blogs.sun.com/socialsite, or here or both places at once. So here's some blog fodder, a series of posts describing the extensions we are making to OpenSocial. [Read More]

I've been neglecting my Blogging Roller duties, no doubt, but Roller work continues albeit at a slower pace. If you want the official word on Apache Roller status and progress then check the project's reports to the ASF board. I just added links to the most recent three reports to the Roller project blog. Here's a summary of those reports lifted right from the blog:

Below are some of my photos from my trip to the Open Source Days conference conference in Copenhagen. I only had a little time to explore Copenhagen, but I managed to see a lot of the city. I took a number of very long walks and explored most of the downtown and the Christiana area.

As you can see from the photos, the city is beautiful with lots of big squares, pedestrian-only streets, canals and beautiful architecture. The mass transit system is great and you see a lot of folks getting around by pedal power; I wish my city was so bicycle friendly. At the conference and in my travels around the city, I found that the people are very friendly and eager to be helpful. All in all, a very nice experience and I hope it's not too long before I get to visit again.

If you want to learn more about SocialSite, here's your chance. I'll be doing a SocialSite webinar tomorrow (Thursday, Oct. 9) at 11:15am PT. Here's the summary.

Project SocialSite is taking a new approach to social networking. Instead of replacing your existing web site with a Social Networking system, SocialSite allows you make your existing blogs, wikis, forums and portals social and all backed by the same Social Graph of users. It doesn't matter whether your existing applications are Java, Ruby, PHP or blog/CMS template driven, you can easily add the SocialSite Widgets and and give your users a complete Social Networking experience right in the pages of your existing site. You'll be able to provide Personal Profile and Group Profile pages, a Dashboard for your users to manage their groups and connections and allow your users to install standard OpenSocial Gadgets that operate against their network of friends. Your applications can manage the social graph via the SocialSite web services and via standard OpenSocial Gadget technology.

In this webinar we'll explain the reasoning behind Project SocialSite, the basics of OpenSocial and what SocialSite adds, the SocialSite architecture and its Widgets and Web Services.

You can find the dial-in details on wikis.sun.com.

My talk went pretty well yesterday and I'm definitely enjoying both the conference, which is still in progress, and my stay in Copenhagen. I'll post more photos later, but for now here is a shot of the conference setup at ITU Copenhagen.

I'm just gonna steal this straight from Simon's blog 'cause I'm lazy.

Simon Phipps: I got the chance to speak with Dave Johnson last week and catch up on his work building Project SocialSite, a social graph framework exposed as widgets and web services for use by websites wanting to build collaborative communities. Both technically interesting and destined to be an important part of the social media scene, I'll be looking forward to seeing SocialSite in action.

[ MP3 | Ogg ]