Programming Social Applications

The Gadget Specification

Our first task, much like with any other gadget, is to implement the XML gadget wrapper for the application markup and content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Module>
   <ModulePrefs title="Chapter 5 rollup example"
                title_url="http://www.jcleblanc.com"
                description="Displays the profile information for the
                             current user and user friends"
                author="Jonathan LeBlanc">
      <Require feature="opensocial-0.9"/>
      <Require feature="osapi" />
   </ModulePrefs>

We add in the gadget metadata for author, description, title, and the associated title URL. In this gadget, we will be using the OpenSocial lightweight JavaScript library osapi and will not need any other libraries along with this feature. To include osapi, we add in two Require nodes—one for OpenSocial 0.9, which is the lowest OpenSocial version needed for osapi, and one for the osapi library itself.