An update on the Appleseed Social Framework

[Michael Chisari]

Hello, everyone, I know I've been quiet about Appleseed lately, so I thought it would be good to send an update of what I've been working on.  I've been focusing on four things for Appleseed:

0. I've set up a wiki, at wiki.appleseedproject.org.  This is where (hopefully) better documentation of the project will take place.  The wiki documentation might be sketchy in places, but it should be accurate as of the 0.7.10 release.  There's some interesting stuff on the Philosophy page that I hope people will argue with me about.

1. Version 0.7.10.  This version will set the foundation for a new Graph API that will form the final protocol that Appleseed nodes will use to interact (of course, Appleseed can also support multiple other protocols as well, such as OStatus).  This will also be a unified API that developers will use to build mobile applications, and client-side javascript for their Appleseed components, as well as social networking interop.  This version also will have major refactoring of the database tables, and some new features such as Photos.

2. I've redesigning the main Appleseed website (opensource.appleseedproject.org) to a nicer layout.  I will also now be doing fundraising directly through the website instead of IndieGoGo.

3. I've been working on a full framework UI/UX redesign.  You can see the mockups (as well as a preview of the main website redesign) here:

http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/preview/

More information will be coming, but for you visual learners, this will give you a good idea of where Appleseed is headed for a 1.0 release.

If anybody has any questions, feel free to ask, and I'll try and get to them as soon as I can.

Michael Chisari

Lead Developer, The Appleseed Project

[Evan Prodromou]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:20:39 -0500, Michael Chisari <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:

1. Version 0.7.10.  This version will set the foundation for a new Graph API that will form the final protocol that Appleseed nodes will use to interact (of course, Appleseed can also support multiple other protocols as well, such as OStatus).

I didn't know that! I'm going to have to try it out.

-Evan

[Michael Chisari]

Yeah, Appleseed uses event triggers+hooks to abstract out protocols.  I haven't written a set of OStatus hooks yet, but it's in the roadmap.

Basically, user A posts a status update, which needs to get pushed out to 10 people on their friends list.  For each user, an event is triggered.   Say you have support for OStatus, XMPP, and Appleseed's Graph API in three sets of hooks, "ostatus", "xmpp", and "graph".

User B is discovered to use OStatus, so the ostatus hook is executed, and xmpp and graph return null.  User C uses XMPP, so those hooks are executed, and the other two return null.  The rest use the Appleseed Graph API, which is the default.

This is a little theoretical, since I haven't had the time to build OStatus hooks or anything else, but Appleseed has been able to handle multiple protocols concurrently since around September '10.

Right now, I have two sets of protocol hooks, one for the outdated QuickSocial (which I'll be phasing out), and one for the Graph API, which I'll be moving towards, but both operate simultaneously.

Michael