Programming Social Applications

Putting It All Together

Note

The full code for the samples in this section is available at https://github.com/jcleblanc/programming-social-applications/blob/master/chapter_3/chapter_final.xml.

In this chapter, we have examined several core concepts surrounding OpenSocial application gadgets, including:

• Building an environment to host OpenSocial gadgets

• Expanding on that environment by applying a full social network on top of the gadget host

• Having multiple gadget views, working with subviews, passing data between views, and building error states into the views

• Comparing inline and proxied content within an OpenSocial gadget

Using the lessons we’ve learned from the previous sections, we will now build a base-level gadget with the features usually implemented within an application and allowed by a container. We will implement a ModulePrefs node to define the gadget’s metadata, as well as some locality and link-based information, and then include a number of Content sections to define the application’s content. We will create a Content section that displays only the canvas view content; define a second Content section that will act as a standard footer for the gadget in the canvas, home, and profile views; and then define a final Content section to display an error fallback view should there be a problem with any of our content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Module> <ModulePrefs title="Chapter 3 rollup example" title_url="http://www.jcleblanc.com" description="Displays the concepts ...