Facebook Integration (Read 5812 times)

Since i'm in the voting mood (Provincial election day here in Ontario!).... I vote for this to be the next item after the GPS thing too. No rush - but something i will take advantage of when released. No idea how to do it (I love having an IT department) but from a marketing side... love the idea! Good thinking brantcarter.

Hypothetically, suppose there is such an API, what kind of apps will you be developing? If you come up with the API spec, I'd be willing to put it in for you.

Somehow I suspect it's not completely hypothetical. I have some ideas for a stand alone graphing application, a rough plan for integrating wordpress blogging and the running log, and of course facebook. Let's start with facebook, if you're willing to provide the data. I'll send you a note. -Peter

Guys, I've written an app for the FB API. Here is the fundamental conundrum: the hypothetical FB app must have access to the RA data. Building an RA API is only going to create a situation where someone else has to build a parallel application that Facebook users register with, meaning a user has three logins -- one for RA, one for Facebook, and one for the new hypothetical app. The hypothetical app then serves primarily as a mapping of RA accounts to FB accounts. I don't think that is in any user's best interest, particularly from a usability perspective. The most viable architectural solution is going to be building it as part of RA, integrated with RA's database. The sections of the FB API you'll want to use are auth.* and user.* (the basics) and likely feed.publishActionOfUser. Of course, this app is going to have to live on the RA server(s) and writing it is going to require some intimate knowledge of RA under the covers. I do not really think it requires building an RA API. There may be other good reasons to do that, but building a little Facebook app probably isn't it. BTW, I'll help if you want.

We should probably take this offline due to all the techno talk. I'll take care of the RA side work. Peter provided me with a draft API that he needs for the app, and I don't think it's too difficult to implement. In regards to the push model, I think there can be a compromise. The RA server knows when a record is updated, and can push only the modified profiles at a predetermined interval. The next version of the log will support background tasks. I created the thread pool to process incoming GPS data, but it can be adopted quite easily to run such tasks.

This once again comes down to the closed nature of RunningAhead. There seems like there's a pool of technical people out there who could use an actual RH API (rest, soap, xml-rpm, pick your poison), and then the community could put our own apps together. Instead we wait all year for Eric to implement a single feature just for GPS users (and I'm guessing just forerunner users at that). sigh.

Hey Peter, here's a thought, use a different online running log? I'd like to see you find one that can do the things this one does, one which has been built from the ground up FOR FREE. Eric really doesn't have to do a thing if he doesn't want to, I've been on this a long time and would've been satisfied even if it had stayed the exact same way the whole way through. I've seen some pretty absurd requests made of this site, but the improvements that HAVE been made are greatly appreciated, but not ness. As for the Facebook app, like someone said, why not just add the link in your FB profile? Done.

Hi Brant, Progress is slowed down by the CR stuff but I'm still working with Peter to get it done. eric

Sure RA is the bomb but having an API just makes it even more "awesomerr"

I vote for more "awesommer"!

Peter, I meant to write back to you but I've been busy with a lot of stuff. I even had your email in front of me yesterday but my attention was diverted to something else right after.