OpenSocial Templates and Data Pipelining Spec Collaboration

[Chris Bissell]

Hello everyone,

 

Now that we’ve come to an agreement on how templating works, and now that we have a prototype implementation to work off, we have some work to do in terms of figuring out what the standard template library looks like, how we can define and join data onto the template system, and how the html-proxy implementation works. 

 

Iterating on a working spec can be difficult in a mailing list, and it would be lovely if we had people putting their ideas into a growing document.  To that end I created a wiki (MediaWiki) at http://wiki.opensocial-templates.org.  It has the requisite plugins for code examples (source highlighting--example on the first page) and references (Cite).  I would be gratified if you’d take a look and see if it fits your expectations.  Right now it’s divided into 3 sections (linked from the home page):

 

1.       Templating

2.       Data Pipelining (markup for defining data calls and rendering them through templates)

3.       Markup (where we can collaborate on a list of agreed-upon tags for the templating system)

 

Everyone is welcome to create an account and improve on the *rough* ideas that are already there.  And of course please respond to this post if you have concerns or suggestions.  I’ll be moderating the wiki, so don’t be afraid to make changes—I’ll keep things clean.  To further optimize communication, perhaps we could also move the mailing-list discussions on the templating/data spec into another list (at the risk of having too many lists, but at the benefit of being able to open and link topics and threads more evenly)?

 

Chris

(Also, if you notice slowness or instability, suffice it to say it’s moving to a faster platform shortly).

 

[Lev Epshteyn]

Hey, Chris. The proposal looks pretty interesting, but I am not quite
sure I understand how you offer to link declarative data requests with
the templates that the data is to be rendered against.

Let us say I have a template in the page, and define a
<os:dataRequest> tag, the result of which I want to pass to the
template. How would this be represented in markup in your proposal?

I'm sorry if this is already in the wiki and I'm missing it.

On Jul 14, 11:17 pm, Chris Bissell <cbiss...@myspace.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> Now that we've come to an agreement on how templating works, and now
> that we have a prototype implementation to work off, we have some work
> to do in terms of figuring out what the standard template library looks
> like, how we can define and join data onto the template system, and how
> the html-proxy implementation works.
>
> Iterating on a working spec can be difficult in a mailing list, and it
> would be lovely if we had people putting their ideas into a growing

> document. To that end I created a wiki (MediaWiki) athttp://wiki.opensocial-templates.org. It has the requisite plugins for

> code examples (source highlighting--example on the first page) and
> references (Cite). I would be gratified if you'd take a look and see if
> it fits your expectations. Right now it's divided into 3 sections
> (linked from the home page):
>
> 1. Templating
>
> 2. Data Pipelining (markup for defining data calls and rendering
> them through templates)
>
> 3. Markup (where we can collaborate on a list of agreed-upon tags
> for the templating system)
>
> Everyone is welcome to create an account and improve on the *rough*
> ideas that are already there. And of course please respond to this post
> if you have concerns or suggestions. I'll be moderating the wiki, so

> don't be afraid to make changes-I'll keep things clean. To further

[Chris Bissell]

Hi Lev,

You certainly didn't miss it, that's a piece that needs to get into the
documentation. I didn't have anything sufficiently elegant to add to
the rough draft--what I'll do (tomorrow) is put up what thoughts I *do*
have, at which time I'd very much appreciate your input and
collaboration.

Chris

[Chris Bissell]

Hello again,

I make some significant updates to the wiki that include 3 sample apps:

1. Shows basic user data in context
2. Shows a splash page and then a pageable list of friends
3. Shows third party data in a master-detail view.

I did my best to explain these apps in some detail--direct link below:

http://wiki.opensocial-templates.org/index.php?title=OpenSocial_Data_Pip
elining

Do let me know if anything requires more clarification (or any thoughts
in general, for that matter :) ).

[Chris Bissell]

Added further updates to the document:

1. section describing how to access data from JavaScript
2. section for how to share data definitions between multiple views.
3. "issues" section that shows what can be tackled next.

[Chris Bissell]

Hello everyone,

I added a section for error trapping and authorization checks. As we
all know, error checking makes simple code into complicated code. I'm
not sure this is the most elegant way of doing it, so I invite people to
look and comment.

http://wiki.opensocial-templates.org/index.php?title=OpenSocial_Data_Pip
elining#Error.2C_Permissions.2C_and_Compatibility_Checks

[Chris Bissell]

Erg, apologies for the duplicate post, but that link got chewed up.
Please go to:

http://wiki.opensocial-templates.org/index.php?title=OpenSocial_Data_Pip
elining

and in the Contents section click on "Error, Permissions, and
Compatibility Checks" to head to the relevant part of the spec.

[Dan Peterson]

To that point, let's focus the discussions around templates, data pipelining, and standard tags on a "sub-group" (so people who are expressly interested in the details can get involved, and then full proposals can be floated by this primarily list for approval): http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/os-templates/

To get the ball rolling, Charlie Jiang from Yahoo has gone ahead and added some comments on that sub-group/wiki regarding a proposal for 6 standard markup tags -- if you have comments, please get involved there.

Chris, thanks for setting up the wiki and kicking this off!
-Dan