Posted by coreb on June 14, 2007 at 1:59pm
Create Drupal Native Version of the API
31% (4 votes)
Use Facebook's Version, and just add the hooks needed
69% (9 votes)
Other Option I haven't thougth of (please comment)
0% (0 votes)
Total votes: 13
Comments
Clarification
The reason I ask: do we want user's downloading a separate library to have Facebook related modules work? What happens when Facebook does an update?
stick with what's simple and what works
From what I can tell, by scouring the FB API client code, we shouldn't have problems with API updates. Each call needs to send the parameter 'v' (for version) where the client can specify which version of the API it wants to talk to. The current 'v' is 1.0.
The FB API client, from my very lazy research, is about 10% biz-logic, 10% REST framework, and 80% endpoint wrapper functions (all statistics were invented on the fly). As long as our calls hit the wrapper functions we should be fairly buffered from the API itself.
The thing that worries me about us cooking our own API client is upgradability, and compatibility nuances.
Since the API client is small, fairly simple, and has quite readable code, I vote we stick with it.
Cheers,
James.
What kind of licensing will
What kind of licensing will allow us to distribute the library with the module? If the platform is compatible, it'd defiantly be the best solution.
The greatest benefit from rolling our own "drupal" one, is that users won't need to download extra libraries.
Developer module
This really is a crunchy developer module. If a "user" can't download a library, they're not going to get far with API keys, etc.
What about a script?
I'm no lawyer, but if we can't distribute the client with the API mod, what about writing a little PHP (or shell) script that would download the latest client and unpack it for them. The client isn't in the members only area of FB, so this should be fairly straight forwrad.
Also, a bit off topic, but FB just updated their resources page and the link to the official PHP client has been change from PHP5 (only) to PHP 4 + 5. As long as it works, that should settle the PHP4 versus 5 debate.
Nope
Security, security, security. Again, the "user" in this case is someone comfortable installing Drupal modules. I, for one, am not signing up to help maintain or support any such script. Instructions in the README with wget link-to-file is pretty damn easy.
This has come up multiple multiple times on the dev list and as to what is appropriate for CVS.
Reinventing The Wheel
If the Drupal Facebook API module is implemented ontop of the already existing Facebook API, it will save us (the developers), a lot of time in maintenance, upgrading and compatibility. This could also give us the ability to do some pretty neat things, like implement hooks for Facebook API functions. It could really become a powerful system.