Welcome Developers!

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Welcome!

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App Notifications Beta Release

Developers can now generate custom notifications from their applications.

App Notifications are generic one to one communications from an application to a specific User of that application. In addition to providing a framework for communicating general application state messages, App Notifications also include the ability to allow the User to execute an application specific action from multiple choices.

The following documentation is for a BETA release. At this time:

  • App Notifications can only be received by Developers of the application.
  • App Notifications will expire after 7 days.
  • Users will only see the 5 most recent notifications per app.

Please read the App Notifications documentation for more information.



Posted by: Bryan Green
a.k.a. Codestorm

Comments

 

Anatoly said:

Is it 0.8 only?

April 20, 2009 7:15 PM
 

& said:

Yes 0.8 is the minimum required OpenSocial version.

April 20, 2009 8:09 PM
 

Anatoly said:

@Marco

1) it is not clear from documentation.

2) Why actually? This is not OS spec (implemented via MyOpenSpace). I have many apps on 0.7 which I'm not able to upgrade to 0.8 due to bugs on myspace platform.

Myspace platform team doesn't fix blocker bugs.

April 20, 2009 8:44 PM
 

Brandon Black said:

@Anatoly

The requirement for OS v0.8 is not due to anything in the OpenSocial specification. It is simply a new feature that is unsupported in older versions of OpenSocial on the MySpace platform.

Newer site features such as this one get implemented first in the latest version of OS that MySpace supports for obvious reasons. Additionally, with OS 0.9 just around the corner, it is unlikely that new features such as this will be supported in past versions of OS and developers will be encouraged to migrate their apps to newer OS versions.

As a result, OS v0.8 is a minimum requirement for any app that would like to take advantage of this new feature.

April 20, 2009 10:34 PM
 

Srini said:

@ Anatoly

What bugs are you facing in migrating from v0.7 to v0.8?

There is a fix rolling out next week, which should address an issue faced by some developers in migrating from v0.7 to v0.8.

April 20, 2009 11:10 PM
 

Anatoly said:

@Brandon Black

MyOpenSpace is not OS. Neither 0.7, 0.8 or 0.9

April 21, 2009 4:24 AM
 

Anatoly said:

@Srini

1) appdata: fetch doesn't work with OWNER (works with viewer).

2) the whole issue of appdata in 0.8 is mismanaged. Documented code and samples do not support 0.7-0.8 migration without losing data. There is a working approach is undocummented.

3) refreshing XML (with 0.7-0.8 change) doesn't change version in UI - need to change manually.

I can continue with the list but you can just look in the forums. Please don't suggest any additional workarounds. The platform already looks like one huge workaround.

There is a big number of other visible bugs which remain unfixed for months. Take for example a broken misformatted link to app profile view from dev console.

Overall the platform si not solid and unstable. There are always intermittent bugs and issues.

April 21, 2009 4:40 AM
 

Anatoly said:

===

Additionally, with OS 0.9 just around the corner, it is unlikely that new features such as this will be supported in past versions of OS and developers will be encouraged to migrate their apps to newer OS versions.

===

It sounds like "will be forced to migrate".

0.9 maybe around the corner for you but NOW we have 0.7 and 0.8.

Why would some apps have competitive advantage like this just because they are written in 0.8 and not in 0.7?

Migration is not an easy process on myspace and needs time and testing. Devs need to allocate time and resources to migrate (sometimes dozens of big apps).

In addition bugs on myspace prevent easy migration to 0.8 without losing data.

I want to implement this type of feature ASAP but migrate only when I have time and I'm confident there are no problems for my users.

Maybe I plan to migrate 0.7-0.9 without making a stop at 0.8?

April 21, 2009 5:07 AM
 

stephane arcos said:

Good news !

Will you had that to Iframe PostTo Apps ?

Thanx

April 21, 2009 8:42 AM
 

& said:

@anatoly

Thanks for your feedback. I see what we can do internally to help you and make migrations less painful.

One note, we are indeed living in a very agile environment. There is a reason why OpenSocial is not on version 1.0 yet. OpenSocial is trying out what works and what doesn't and prefers to iterate quickly.

I hope you still would consider 0.8. Because based on your feedback, we can make changes to the 0.9. Or suggest changes to the 1.0 specifications.  So your feedback on these early versions is very important to us and the OpenSocial community.

April 21, 2009 8:44 AM
 

Brandon Black said:

@Anatoly

No one will be forced. That's definitely *NOT* what I said :)

But just like you mentioned it takes devs resources to migrate, it also takes us a huge amount of resources to support new features like this for all developers in multiple OS versions all throughout the site.

As a result, new features like this one are currently only available in our latest version of OS supported on the site. If devs want to take advantage of them, they are will need to migrate their app to a newer OS version.

It's not an uncommon or unheard of thing in the software development world to have to upgrade to a newer version of something to take advantage of newer features.

April 21, 2009 11:06 AM
 

KushApps said:

Is this going to affect IFRAME'd apps as well who use the PostTo workaround?

thx

April 21, 2009 2:31 PM
 

Brock said:

Is there a REST implementation of this functionality? We want to be able to notify users when our apps have new content and it would be easiest if we could send out notifications from our servers when they get updated.

April 21, 2009 2:53 PM
 

Anatoly said:

@Brandon Black

===

But just like you mentioned it takes devs resources to migrate, it also takes us a huge amount of resources to support new features like this for all developers in multiple OS versions all throughout the site.

===

Again it's only 0.7 and 0.8. I know, the word "multiple" sounds like a huge number. But we have only 2. The same is about your "huge amount of resources". I bet this feature just can be copypasted into 0.7 (or even use the same codebase). And if it is not the case - you have a significant design engineering problem.

===

It's not an uncommon or unheard of thing in the software development world to have to upgrade to a newer version of something to take advantage of newer features.

===

Oh, please! This specific feature was not introduced together with OS 0.8, but couple of days ago. It also doesn't belong to OS 0.8 spec. Doesn't belong.

These are the facts. My suggestion for you to find a better analogy.

It's not an uncommon or unheard of thing in the software development world to make new API version implementations 100% backward compatible. Which means - my 0.7 app should work in 0.8 environment without any change. I promise you if that would be the case I would migrate all my apps to 0.8 in one day and take advantage of new features.

April 21, 2009 3:35 PM
 

Kevin said:

Will this be compatible for all the iframe apps out there that use the IFPC workaround?

April 21, 2009 4:53 PM
 

Brock said:

Also, can this be called on any surface or is it restricted to the canvas view?

April 21, 2009 5:14 PM
 

my␣ CodeStorm said:

Brock -

It will be possible to send notifications through REST.  We're adding a new REST endpoint specifically for server to server calls for an open social app, for the scenario you describe.  We'll update the documentation when it's available.

Notifications can be sent from any surface.

April 21, 2009 10:39 PM
 

Bigi said:

How would you send a notif to multiple recipients other than looping?

From the documentation:

Both the REST and container notification calls can accept up to 1000 recipients at a time.

However, when I try to put 2 recipient IDs separated by a comma in the recipient string, I get an error:

Recipient IDs must be a positive integer represented as a string.

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