OpenSocial Container Sample - Getting started
Purpose
This sample serves two primary purposes:
- To demonstrate how a container can be implemented using a simple
example.
- To create an environment for easy gadget testing. OpenSocial is all
about social APIs, which means that gadget testing usually involves
multiple user accounts. This container makes testing easy by letting
gadgets specify arbitrary state for any number of users.
How it works? (Theory)
As the gadget developer you need to specify two pieces of information:
- URL to the gadget definition; and
- initial state of the container in the form of a URL to a state file.
You can find the DTD for the state definition in the docs/state.dtd folder.
The state definition file allows you to specify the viewer of the gadget,
the owner, the friends and the activities of those users. Once the gadget and
its state are loaded you can use the gadget in the same way as any other
container. At any point you can also dump a snap shot of the state of the
environment to an XML file (with the same format as the state definition
file).
Tips/caveats
- Due to browser security restrictions, your gadget definition
file and system state file must be on the same server as the
container if you specify a url. The above step by step procedure runs the test container from the local
file system. You can also copy the files to a web server and run off it
instead.
- The gadget definition URL is stored in a cookie.
You can set the values to empty or clear your cookies to clear existing
values for those fields.
- For easier debugging of your gadget script in Firebug, include the
gadget script using a script tag in the gadget definition file, instead
of inlining the script. Sometimes Firebug still cannot display the gadget
javascript if it is on the local file system. To avoid this, you can untar
the package to a web server and access it through an
http URL
to that server.
- You always need to specify a state file for the container. At a minimum
it must include the viewer name. All other fields are optional.