Programming Social Applications

Configuring Your Application with ModulePrefs

The ModulePrefs node allows a developer to not only define metadata about a gadget (such as a title and author), but also features and processing rules. This is core information defined by a gadget developer, and it cannot be modified by gadget users.

ModulePrefs contains a number of attribute strings, all of which are elements that containers are required to support, but which are optional for developers to specify. These attributes are listed in Table 3-1.

Table 3-1. ModulePrefs attributes

Attribute	Description
author	The author of the gadget.
author_email	A working email address for the gadget’s author. Since gadgets for public social networking containers are also public, there is potential for spam, so this should be a dedicated gadget email account, not a personal one.
description	A description of the application.
screenshot	A publicly accessible URL that provides a screenshot of the application. This field is generally used in gadget galleries or for invitations to applications.
thumbnail	A publicly accessible URL that provides a thumbnail image for a gadget. This field is generally used in conjunction with the title to display brief information for a gadget.
title	The title of the application.
title_url	A URL, such as a website or forum, linked from the title of the application.

A fully qualified ModulePrefs node can take the following form:

<ModulePrefs author="John Smith" author_email="[e-mail]" description="My application does all sorts ...