I'd like to propose that we drop the -c from json-c in the Restful API spec and just call our output format json.
The spec is nearing completion for 0.8 and we're about to submit a patch that begins to enable json processing for the api server. Currently the patch configures the server according to the spec, with query parameter of "format=json-c" that is the default for the server. The primary reason for the "-c" suffix, as I understand it, is the underlying java framework Abdera has some prior art, in an extension module called 'json' that responds to requests with "format=json" and produces an atom-like json representation. I feel like we should explicitly replace this format with the speicialized json format in the rest api spec. If users of the java server wanted to turn on abdera's json extension, there would be a conflict. I don't know how this would be resolved and I'm hoping James Snell, the author, chimes in here. To this point, the shindig implementation has not included this extension and it probably never will. I don't feel like a small implementation detail in one of the libs of one of the languages should should impact the spec this way. If anything, the Abdera json extension, if used, should respond and be suffixed something like json-atom or json-snell. ;-) davep davep On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Jun Yang (杨骏) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi all. > > We would like to propose an implementation for "A modest proposal for an > OpenSocial RESTful API". > > We propose the following: > > Use Apache Abdera as the basis of the reference server implementation > Add a JsonCParser to support input in JSON-c format (JSON-c for compact JSON > format as specified in the API spec, not a new MIME type) > Add a JsonCWriter to support output in JSON-c format > Add an OpenSocial API (Person, Activity and AppData, Java version under > org.apache.shindig.social.opensocial) adapter to integrate with existing API > implementation and keep the same interface on the backend and the client > for the following reasons: > > The RESTful API proposal supports a clean and natural JSON format (JSON-c) > as well as AtomPub. Apache Abdera is an open source reference > implementation of AtomPub that offers most of the functionality we need. > Reusing it seems to be natural choice > Abdera already supports input in Atom. We need to add support for input in > JSON-c > Abdera already supports output in Atom (as well as a JSON format). We need > to add support for output in JSON-c > Abdera's support for adapters that translate from a foreign data format and > protocol into its Feed Object Model (FOM) comes handy to support existing > data sources such as relational databases and existing implementation of > OpenSocial APIs. Existing OpenSocial APIs are very close to Atom's model > and can be adapted easily > We have includes two diagrams as illustration of the architecture of the > proposed implementation. Diagram 1 shows the generic architecture. Those > components in italics are to be written. Diagram 2 shows the use of two > adapters, iBATIS (existing in Abdera) to integrate with relational > databases, and OpenSocial API adapter (to be written), to integrate with > existing OpenSocial backend. > > Please review and comment. Thanks! > > Vasu Nori and Jun Yang
