Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Make more of the Open Source Facebook API

This Facebook open source effort is really getting to me, seriously guys.   If you could have done this a few months ago I would not have had to kill myself with implementing all your APIs.   I could focus more on how to wrap the APIs with security, graphing, metering, and more.

Luckily the Ringside team has discovered a way to warp time and get both done! As I posted a while back we already have an open source version of the Facebook APIs for application developers to test against. We have also shown how to extend the platform, and add APIs to your own network. This past week we updated the core implementation of the APIs, without changing how the APIs are implemented. APIs now are active participants in their lifecycle.

Load - we load the session and context specific to the user, application and network. This part is important since it ensures each requests data can be encapsulated to their session. At this point we can also determine if this user has identities across multiple networks and tie things together.

Delegation - an intermediary step which allows any api to participate in delegation. If this call maps to an open social container in the ether or facebook we can offer trusted delegation. We also ensure in the case of facebook the user and application are valid on that network. Notice no big pipe into a given social network but rather ensure that the Application and User are connected properly.

Validate - a sequence of validation steps to ensure the request is meant for this network and approved to make the request. Validating session, keys, signatures, callid's and request parameters.

Execute - execute the method and render its response in the appropriate format (json, xml, php). Exception process is handled.

We look forward to sharing with Facebook's open source release. And eagerly awaiting to validate against their code drop for compatibility testing.

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