---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Brickley <dan
...@danbri.org>
Date: Tue, May 13, 2008 at 6:28 PM
Subject: [Fwd: OAuth for writable scratchpads (eg. FOAF file publishing)?]
To: Dan Brickley <danbrick
...@gmail.com>
Hi all
To me this feels like a classic use-case for OAuth, but I could do
with some pointers esp re tools.
In the FOAF scene, we have long had a collection of tools that will
generate FOAF-based descriptions of people. For example Leigh Dodds
(cc:'d) maintains the Javascript-based foaf-a-matic tool. And there
are adaptors than convert, summarise, aggregate and so forth from
other sources too (dbtunes/myspace/lastfm for music, flickr wrappers,
etc.).
In each case, we have the issue of what to do with the resulting
data. How to actually get it published into the decentralised Web,
rather than only from a handful of large hosting sites. Leigh's
foaf-a-matic leaves the user with some RDF/XML markup to upload
themselves; this is not so great for the non-technical. Other tools
work by being called as HTTP REST services, whose URLs need linking
from the user's main pages (or cross-referenced later via
aggregators). Or by asking the user for an username/password for
upload.
OAuth suggests a way forward. And one in which subsequent updates to
the generated FOAF could be pushed to a site without the need for
further user interaction. But from poking around a bit, I'm yet to
find an off-the-shelf OAuth-based generic "uploads" scratchpad. Is
this something has been discussed? Idea would roughly be, that such an
endpoint would allow FOAF-generating sites to get a token allowing
FOAF (or other; this is a very generic idea) data files to be uploaded
to a public directory. AtomPub seems pertinent; but then so does a
plain HTTP PUT.
For example, dbtune.org generates
http://dbtune.org/last-fm/danbri.rdf from my last.fm buddylist. I'd be
happy for dbtune to post that and more to
http://danbri.org/scratchpad/dbtune/blahblah.rdf directly. And for it
to push updates to my site via OAuth permissioning.
Is anyone building such a utility? In my innocence it seems quite
simple sounding, but I've not found anything that does it yet (except
perhaps Apache Abdera which has OAuth/AtomPub).
Am I making any sense here? Any pointers / suggestions gratefully received...
cheers,
Dan
--
http://danbri.org/
