Introducing the OpenSocial Development Environment
March 19th, 2009 | Published in Google OpenSocial
With the OpenSocial Development Environment (OSDE), you no longer need an online OpenSocial container environment to build your applications. OSDE is a new Eclipse plugin that lets you develop either OpenSocial JavaScript (gadget) client applications or OpenSocial Java client applications using OpenSocial 0.8's REST/RPC protocols, entirely within the Eclipse development environment.
OSDE is the creation of Yoichiro Tanaka, an expert software developer and leading pioneer in OpenSocial development from Japan. Yoichiro has also published a book on OpenSocial development in Japan.
Installing the OSDE plugin onto Eclipse 3.4.1 (or later) takes only minutes, and you can be up and running with a fully self-contained OpenSocial development environment. OSDE provides a complete social network environment in a single plugin, along with the necessary tools to easily manage your environment's social data. Additionally, you won't need to create multiple accounts on a social network for testing your applications. This can come in handy if you happen to feel inspired to create a new OpenSocial app while on a plane!
Architectural Highlights
OSDE is able to provide a complete, standalone development environment because it bundles the same code running on many OpenSocial containers today into a single Eclipse plug-in: for serving gadgets and OpenSocial data, Apache Shindig is bundled along with a compact Java H2 database, allowing for social data persistence. OSDE also uses Hibernate for Java Object Relational mapping of the OpenSocial data entities: people, activities, and data. Plus, OSDE bundles the OpenSocial Java client library so its wizards can quickly generate runnable Java client applications that use OpenSocial's REST/RPC protocols.
Feature Highlights
OSDE also includes development features that greatly enhance OpenSocial development:
OSDE is the creation of Yoichiro Tanaka, an expert software developer and leading pioneer in OpenSocial development from Japan. Yoichiro has also published a book on OpenSocial development in Japan.
Installing the OSDE plugin onto Eclipse 3.4.1 (or later) takes only minutes, and you can be up and running with a fully self-contained OpenSocial development environment. OSDE provides a complete social network environment in a single plugin, along with the necessary tools to easily manage your environment's social data. Additionally, you won't need to create multiple accounts on a social network for testing your applications. This can come in handy if you happen to feel inspired to create a new OpenSocial app while on a plane!
Architectural Highlights
OSDE is able to provide a complete, standalone development environment because it bundles the same code running on many OpenSocial containers today into a single Eclipse plug-in: for serving gadgets and OpenSocial data, Apache Shindig is bundled along with a compact Java H2 database, allowing for social data persistence. OSDE also uses Hibernate for Java Object Relational mapping of the OpenSocial data entities: people, activities, and data. Plus, OSDE bundles the OpenSocial Java client library so its wizards can quickly generate runnable Java client applications that use OpenSocial's REST/RPC protocols.
Feature Highlights
OSDE also includes development features that greatly enhance OpenSocial development:
- OpenSocial project creator wizards for both JavaScript/gadget client apps, as well as Java client applications that use the REST/RPC protocols.
- A re-entrant gadget specification editor that enables efficient editing of OpenSocial gadget properties, views, locale settings, user preferences as well as gadget and spec/JavaScript source code.
- An OpenSocial console view that shows the console output of the local Shindig/H2 social engine, as well as tabbed views for directly managing the onboard People, Activities and AppData persisted social data.
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- OSDE users can use the social database console to edit their own custom social data (such as people, friend relationships, activities etc.), or they can simply load the sample social data that comes with Apache Shindig's 'Sample Container' application.
- OSDE users can use the social database console to edit their own custom social data (such as people, friend relationships, activities etc.), or they can simply load the sample social data that comes with Apache Shindig's 'Sample Container' application.