OpenSocial is a public specification for creating web applications using standard technologies like HTML, CSS, and Javascript. It was originally developed by Google, Myspace and others to standardize common social networking API’s but has evolved into a general platform for building web applications. Whereas “standard” applications work with data on a per-user basis, “social” applications share data within well defined networks, facilitating communication of information between groups of users. OpenSocial applications, called gadgets, are similar to portlets because they can be added to your portal’s pages and used for all kinds of tasks. Gadgets are characterized as being simple, widely available, and easy to deploy.
In this chapter, we’ll cover the following topics:
- OpenSocial gadget basics.
- Using PubSub to allow gadgets to communicate with each other and with portlets.
- Liferay’s gadget editing environment.
Let’s first look at the structure of an OpenSocial gadget and consider the concepts involved with OpenSocial gadgets.