Mashup University: Tapping The Portable Social Network

Kevin Lawver

This is a presentation. If you'd like to view all the slides like a normal web page, you can.

Tapping the Portable Social Network

• I'm tired of starting over.
• What if I could bring my social network with me to every new site I go to?
• This is all Jeremy Keith's fault

Ingredients

1. Ruby on Rails
2. The following gems:
   • ruby-openid
   • mofo
3. MySQL
4. jquery
5. A page with an OpenID delegate, an hcard and a blogroll with XFN
   • I mean, who doesn't have that?

Getting Started

1. Create a rails app: rails mashup_u
   • Or download this thing
2. Make the changes in the README
3. Configure the database in config/database.yml
4. run script/server to make sure things work.

The Routine Stuff

1. delete public/index.html
2. put jquery.js in public/javascript
3. create a layout
4. add that layout to application.rb

Create Your Model

script/generate model User

Create Your Controllers

script/generate controller users
script/generate controller signin

Now, It's Time To Create a Signin Page!

1. open up controllers/signin_controller.rb
2. We need a few methods: index, aol_signin, aol_signedin, openid_signin, openid_signedin
3. We'll start with OpenID...

Configuring

• We need to tell Rails where to store OpenID stuff
• In environment.rb (at the bottom):

require "openid"
$OPENID_STORE = OpenID::FilesystemStore.new("#{RAILS_ROOT}/tmp/cache")
$OPENID_RETURN = "http://HOST:PORT/signin/openid_signedin"

Handling OpenID

• We need to create the form in app/views/signin/index.rhtml
• Then we need to create the action!

Logging In With OpenID

• We need to create the openid_signin method in app/controllers/signin_controller.rb

Let's Log In!

• Woo-hoo! (I'm being hopeful)

Let's Add OpenAuth!

• Go get a key
• Add some config to environment.rb
• And then add some code to signin_controller.rb!

Let's Log In!

• Woo-hoo! (again with the hope)

Time to make a User

• We've logged in, now what?
• We need to define what's in our users table.
• Open up db/migrate/001_create_users.rb and add some columns

Create Some Relationships

• Yet another model: script/generate model Relationship

Now, We Need Some Users!

• We need some to play with, so let's fake some.
• Run script/generate migration create_dummy_users
• And let's make some friends!
  • When you do this, you should use folks from your buddy list or who are on your blog roll.

Time To Make The Tables!

• Run rake db:migrate

We Need to do Something About the Login Process

• Let's make it do something special if you're a new user...

Now, we're ready to do something cool!

• I know, finally!
• Now, we have two different user types, and need to do slightly different things with them.
• We can also assume slightly different things from the data we have about them.

For OpenID Users

• We have an URL.
  • What's there?
  • What can we infer about the user from the data we find there?

Enter Microformats!

• Let's look for an hcard
• Let's look for some XFN links
• Yes, mofo is that cool.

For AOL Users

• We have a screenname and a display name
• We have a buddy list, so we know who their friends are.
  • This version uses javascript to pull in the buddy list that I stole from another project. There is a way to do it server-side.

Back to the Code!

• We need to handle those new users, so into users_controller.rb we go!
• We need to define a new method.
• And then do something different based on their identity_type.

Creating a Form

• Now we need a form so they an tell us stuff we either don't know, or change the stuff we do.
• Then we need to do something smart when they hit Save.

Finding the Network

• Let's show OpenID first.
• We go grab the identity url
• crawl for XFN links
• then do a lookup and see if they're in our network
• display them to the user and let them choose who to keep and who to ignore.

Find the AOL Network

• It's all built into the buddy list, so we have to do some extra stuff to get to it.
• Sprinkle in some javascript
• A little JSON web service
• And voila, the people in your buddy list who are here already!

Creating Your User

• In users_controller.rb, we need a create method!
• It creates the user, then adds the relationships they checked off from the form.

Possibilities

• It would be trivial to turn these two things into widgets so you could put in your blog URL and have it pre-fill the contacts, even if that's not your identity URL. Same thing with the buddy list stuff.
• What other places are there on the web that aggregate this data in:
  • Predictable formats
  • With enough "reputation" to make it reliable and accurate
  • That don't require Yet Another Network to maintain?

Questions

• Gimme a minute, I need to catch my breath...