Preview release of the OpenSocial Dev App

[Arne Roomann-Kurrik]

Hi,

I'm currently working on the OpenSocial Dev App, which is a tool for prototyping and debugging JavaScript code against a live container environment.  Its aim is to provide a tool to ease the learning curve of developers unfamiliar with the JavaScript APIs, as well as give experienced developers a quick way to test new containers or API methods.

We're planning on pushing this tool out to a wide audience in the next few days, but were hoping that the members of this list would be able to try out the development version and provide commentary on what works, what doesn't work, and how this tool could be changed to further improve the OpenSocial development process.  If you have any feedback, please send it my way!

(Some of you may know earlier versions of the OpenSocial Dev App as CodeRunner or DAfOS.   This is the last name change, I promise)

Links to the application:

• XML spec - http://osda.appspot.com/gadget/osda-development.xml
• Running on orkut's sandbox - http://sandbox.orkut.com/Main#AppInfo.aspx?appId=1087114126471
• Running on hi5's sandbox - http://sandbox.hi5.com/friend/apps/entry/osda.appspot.com/gadget/osda-development.xml
• Running on Friendster - http://widgets.friendster.com/osda-development
• Additional containers forthcoming - I'll be submitting it to MySpace shortly.
  

Features of the OpenSocial Dev App:

• Code tab - Run JavaScript code in the context of an OpenSocial container.  Save and load code samples for later use.
  
• News tab  - View the latest entries from various OpenSocial developer blogs.  Stay up to date on the happenings of OpenSocial in one convenient location.
  
• Samples tab - A list of samples from the Dev App team that illustrate common OpenSocial actions.  These samples can be loaded into the code tab and modified by the developer.
• Data Viewer tab - Inspect the data that the container returns when requesting people and app data.  This is a quick way of seeing what data is available to your app on a given container.
• Export XML tab - Fill out a form that will let you quickly generate an XML spec from your sample code.  Form contents can be saved and loaded, for reuse with different samples if needed.  (Note that this currently doesn't support multiple views, which is an upcoming feature)
• Help tab - An online help browser with information about using the application.
  

Planned roadmap:

• View support in Export XML tab
  
• Additional help documentation, including a Getting Started Guide
• Clipboard support on Export XML tab
• Data request builder.
  

Thanks,
~Arne

[Chris Chabot]

Hey Arne,

Amazing piece of work that is, my compliments! I'm sure I'll put it to good use right away :)

One thing that occurred to me: Wouldn't it be more future proof and expandable of the samples was a list w/ clicks to their code? (and later probably a categorized tree), for novice OpenSocial coders this will probably be a really great resource for starter templates, but as the list expands having all the code on one page quickly would become cumbersome :)

Oh and I found people often get confused that not all containers support all person fields, and different containers support different person fields.. for a novice opensocial coder this can be quite a supprise sometimes :) Do you think it would be fruitful to add something like what this gadget does: http://www.eisbahn.jp/opensocial/retrieve_it/gadget.xml ?

  -- Chris

[jeremi joslin]

Hi Arne,
This gadget is great, and definitely very useful for developers.

What is the license of this gadget?
Is it possible to change the place the OS gadgets are saved?
I would like to copy and adapt it to our product that is AGPL,
is it possible?

Thanks,
jeremi