1 message in com.googlegroups.oauthOAuth for writable scratchpads (eg. F...| From | Sent On | Attachments |
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| Dan Brickley | May 13, 2008 9:28 am |
| Subject: | OAuth for writable scratchpads (eg. FOAF file publishing)? | |
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| From: | Dan Brickley (danb...@gmail.com) | |
| Date: | May 13, 2008 9:28:59 am | |
| List: | com.googlegroups.oauth | |
(resending from my subscriber address)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dan Brickley <dan...@danbri.org> Date: Tue, May 13, 2008 at 6:28 PM Subject: [Fwd: OAuth for writable scratchpads (eg. FOAF file publishing)?] To: Dan Brickley <danb...@gmail.com>
Hi all
To me this feels like a classic use-case for OAuth, but I could do with some pointers esp re tools.
In the FOAF scene, we have long had a collection of tools that will generate FOAF-based descriptions of people. For example Leigh Dodds (cc:'d) maintains the Javascript-based foaf-a-matic tool. And there are adaptors than convert, summarise, aggregate and so forth from other sources too (dbtunes/myspace/lastfm for music, flickr wrappers, etc.).
In each case, we have the issue of what to do with the resulting data. How to actually get it published into the decentralised Web, rather than only from a handful of large hosting sites. Leigh's foaf-a-matic leaves the user with some RDF/XML markup to upload themselves; this is not so great for the non-technical. Other tools work by being called as HTTP REST services, whose URLs need linking from the user's main pages (or cross-referenced later via aggregators). Or by asking the user for an username/password for upload.
OAuth suggests a way forward. And one in which subsequent updates to the generated FOAF could be pushed to a site without the need for further user interaction. But from poking around a bit, I'm yet to find an off-the-shelf OAuth-based generic "uploads" scratchpad. Is this something has been discussed? Idea would roughly be, that such an endpoint would allow FOAF-generating sites to get a token allowing FOAF (or other; this is a very generic idea) data files to be uploaded to a public directory. AtomPub seems pertinent; but then so does a plain HTTP PUT.
For example, dbtune.org generates http://dbtune.org/last-fm/danbri.rdf from my last.fm buddylist. I'd be happy for dbtune to post that and more to http://danbri.org/scratchpad/dbtune/blahblah.rdf directly. And for it to push updates to my site via OAuth permissioning.
Is anyone building such a utility? In my innocence it seems quite simple sounding, but I've not found anything that does it yet (except perhaps Apache Abdera which has OAuth/AtomPub).
Am I making any sense here? Any pointers / suggestions gratefully received...
cheers,
Dan