Developing with Google+

Chapter 1. Introduction

Hello there! Since you’re reading these words, the Google+ platform has probably sparked your interest. Maybe you have a killer app in mind, or perhaps you’re just interested in learning what’s available. Either way, by the time you’re finished with this book, you will be comfortable digging into Google+.

The Google+ platform has three categories of features. Each of these categories is capable of standing alone, but things become more interesting when you combine them. These categories form a natural division, so we’ll be going through them one at a time.

This means you can skip around from chapter to chapter if you wish. Once you become familiar with the components that you’re most interested in, you will be able to combine them into the application that you’re dreaming about. So, feel free to invoke a random access approach to reading this book. If you’re more interested in REST APIs than publisher plugins, skip ahead. I promise I won’t be offended.

The three categories of the Google+ platform are social plugins, like the +1 button, RESTful web services, which provide read access to Google+ data, and hangout applications, for writing your own real time collaboration apps. Additionally, the RESTful web services can be used in a couple of ways. You can either access public data directly when you know what you’re looking for, or you can use OAuth 2.0 to access your user’s data on Google+.

Since this architecture is a bit different from other platforms that you ...