Programming Social Applications

Using an Open Source Technology Stack

Since this book’s major focus is teaching the fundamentals of social application, container, and graph development using an open source stack, it is only prudent that I outline the technologies we will examine.

The major set of open source technologies we will explore in this book includes:

• OpenSocial for exploring the social graph and application development

• Shindig and Partuza as container implementations using OpenSocial

• OAuth for secure application and user authorization

• OpenID for user authentication, including the hybrid OpenID OAuth extension

• Caja and ADsafe for securing frontend code

• The Open Graph protocol to explore social web entities

• Activity Streams as a foundation for delivering activity content

• WebFinger as a means of discovering public user data using email addresses

• OExchange as a means of sharing any URL with any other web service on the Web

• PubSubHubbub as a means of syndicating user conversations from a root provider to multiple subscribers

• The Salmon protocol for taking the foundation of PubSubHubbub and unifying conversations between publishers and subscribers

As we explore this open stack, we will compare the technologies with many of the current proprietary standards used in the industry today. This will give you a good overview of both the potential and the implications of using open source fundamentals.