Shindig: the new hotness

For the last month or so, I’ve been spending a lot of time reading and writing OpenSocial code. I know, show me the codey. Patience, grasshopper…
But ever since the Google I/O gathering, my brain’s been working overtime on ideas.

But I’ve had a stumbling block or two, mainly in the sandbox arena. Apparently, the team over at Orkut is too busy to grant me full developer access there. Even though I was a member long before the Brazilian mafia took over. But it’s all good now, because I’m working in my own sandbox now.

Introducing, Shindig – an Apache incubator project for OpenSocial and gadgets.

The build and run docs are easy to read, I had the puppy up and running in no time at all.

To be truthfully honest, I did run into one situation that needs a little improvement. With the demo OS app below (http://www.bytecounts.com/projects/opensocial/random-quotes.xml), the Shindig “Gadget testing container” totally breaks.


No appropriate view could be found for gadget:
http://www.bytecounts.com/projects/opensocial/random-quotes.xml


Took me a while to realize the solution. Shindig can’t handle the OS profile view.
This code:

  <ModulePrefs title="Multiple Content Sections (version 5)">
    <Require feature="opensocial-0.7" />
  </ModulePrefs>
  <Content type="html" view="profile">
  <![CDATA[

needs to be changed to this code:

  <ModulePrefs title="Multiple Content Sections (version 5)">
    <Require feature="opensocial-0.7" />
  </ModulePrefs>
  <Content type="html">
  <![CDATA[


But I’m totally digging Shindig! Oh come on, you knew it was going to happen