Hi all.

We would like to propose an implementation for "A
modest<http://tr_1207767015170> proposal for an OpenSocial <http://tr_1207767015170> RESTful
API<http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-and-gadgets-spec/browse_thread/thread/f5a0cf3707709ffa> ". 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