Re: [Apc-aa-coders] ning.com inspiration for next version of AA

[Norbert B. <br...@ch...>]

Marek Tichy wrote:
>  From the docs it's not clear it's a shared database, one can use SOAP 
> (a polished XML/RPC) to fetch (thus share) the data. I quite like SOAP.
> I doubt it's a shared database as in the whole Ning is just a bunch of 
> useful php classes, and you write apps in php (= can read DB password  = 
> that's why we don't have php in AA).  I think they mean you have several 
> apps within your workspace and they can exchange data by calling each 
> other methods for fetching content.

You have access to the storage only through API calls so you do not need 
the db password as far as I understood the docs. Content can be stored 
in separate user databases, but it is transparently accessible without 
the need to care about db connections, table structure, etc. You just 
register, create application (you are the owner) which let users to 
create/edit/delete content objects and put them into the data store. 
You/application can mark objects as either public (accessible from all 
other applications, not just yours) or private (not accessible nor 
visible from other apps).

Beside PHP you can use what they call XNHTML expressions. E.g.

<xn:out value="${Content[1234].my.photo}" />
<c:forEach items="collection" [var="variable"]
         [varStatus="variable"] [begin="index"]
         [end="index"] [step="step"] > body
</c:forEach>


Marek, is Ning close to "AA as a flexible datastore with good API for 
use in other tools" you were talking at AACamp?



> BTW, we have talked with Mark about adding tagging into ActionApps. 
> Haven't done much on that front and I'm not sure I will, but doesn't do 
> any harm to mention....

Isn't tagging support just question of one "multiple textfiled" with 
some AJAX glitters (or simple anonymous edit form) to update its 
content?  Or better - separate slice where user (with author perms) can 
store tags with "tag title" field and "tag relation" field pointing to 
the tagged item.

Perhaps "live checkbox" could be extended a litle to provide the 
functionality needed for "tagging".

It would be nice to code tagging support (or any other new feature) as 
much general as possible. So it adds functionality that can be re-used 
also for other purposes.



norbert
br...@ch...