Moved to official ideas list at http://drupal.org/node/234643
The Google Contacts API allows users to retrieve their email contacts from a gmail account without giving a gmail password to the requesting site. This system allows social networking site users to invite friends and find existing users they know without exposing their gmail accounts to malicious site owners or poor security practices.
A Drupal module integrating with this API would allow site users to retrieve their Gmail contacts and find other users on the Drupal site registered using email addresses in their contacts. Ideally, the module would also expose an API allowing other modules to retrieve contacts in the same way. (Invite module, User Relationships module, and others could use this system to build lists of users to friend or invite to a site.)
Comments
Nice proposal, needs a mentor
I've spoken with Jeff and he won't have time over the summer to mentor this project. We need someone to act as a contact point for students as they're writing their applications, and also to mentor the project over the summer. Any takers?
Sandip Dev
I have prepared my proposal for integrating Google Contacts API into Drupal. I would like someone to review it once and send me some feedback. Please help.My email address is dev.sandip@gmail.com
Interested as a Student
I really like the sounds of this proposal. I'm interested in creating mashups of various webservices and would love to help make this happen.
Hoping someone might take some time and mentor this.
Also Interested
I am also interested in this project. I hope someone decides to take this on as a mentor and is looking for an aspiring developer to take this project on.
Interested as a student
I am interested as a student in this project,it seems nice idea to me.
sumit kataria
SumitK
www.sumitk.net
Great Idea
I am also student interested to do this project
Google Contacts
Google Contacts is something I've been looking into for some Android development I have planned, so I'd love to sink my teeth into this project. There seems to be lots of interest already, however, so I had best keep my eyes peeled.
Since there are quite a few people interested in this...
Perhaps have a look through the contributed modules and Google Code's site for other Google APIs not yet implemented by modules. There are also potentially other external APIs for services out there that would be valuable to the community.
I'll also harass Eaton for a list of additional external APIs, since that's sort of his thing. :D
ProgrammableWeb
Programmableweb has a Web 2.0 API Directory with 600+ listings. For anyone looking for inspiration, that would be a good place to start.
Collective integration effort?
Taking cue from you and Alex, I think there might be value in unifying the various Google API based modules and/or extracting a common Google API framework they all build upon. This could lead to more stable code, a consistent API and a more efficient use of resources since we don't need to reinvent the wheel with each new (version of a) Google API.
I don't know whether this might be a good idea for a SoC project, but I would really like to discuss this idea and see where it can take us.
Any thoughts?
Lets see
Well there are too many Google APIs..Integrating all of them would a herculean task....And each is different in what things they do...And hence any sort of consistency will be hard to achieve.
Sharing common tasks is important
I think this needs to be further investigated.
The way I see it (and I haven't touched code, I've read documentation):
1) All of Google's API integration proposals for SoC (document list data, contacts data, youtube data...) are based on Google Data API services (http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/overview.html).
2) Google offers those API's as a consistent framework, there is lots of common ground between the single services: http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/elements.html .
Why should we care about sharing a Google Data API integration?
Each module implementing their own common data API infrastructure if this infrastructure could be shared is not good because:
http://www.twitter.com/lxbarth
See GData propsal
This proposal could be the way to do it:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/10142
http://www.twitter.com/lxbarth
Interested Student
Very nice idea , and if selected will give my best to complete it and perhaps add my own ideas into the same to improve its functionality !! , looking forward to get an opportunity .
IRC : vaish
GTALK/GMAIL > vaish.rajan@gmail.com
Rajan Vaish
IRC:vaish
GMAIL/GTALK IM : vaish.rajan@gmail.com
Nice
Nice and simple to understand. It's strange that Drupal still don't have such ability. I aggree with that proposal!:)
Think positive!!!
Are there other Drupal
Are there other Drupal contrib modules that allow people invite their friends from other contact pools? yahoo, microsoft?
Ideally, this module is designed in a way that we can use it seamless for the user together with other API implementations.
BTW, there is all in one solutions like "address book access widget" http://www.plaxo.com/api/widget out there. Definitely worth a look if working on this project.
Alex
http://www.twitter.com/lxbarth
Drupal Contact List Importer
Hi Alex, the Drupal Contact List Importer does this though I can't speak to it's quality as I haven't used it before. Obviously doing this by API would be much better than the current methods used by these types of systems.
http://drupal.org/project/dcl_importer
--
Gravitek Labs
--
Gravitek Labs
It's great to have something
It's great to have something universal that will contain methods to access contact information from different services. maybe not only from contact pools but any services that have API wich allow to do that.
I had an idea to incorporate several most famous multimedia services in one widget but i like this idea too.
Think positive!!!
Overlap?
I wonder what's the overlap between all those Google API integrations. What would they have in common? Could they share functionality?
http://groups.drupal.org/node/10026#comment-31750
http://www.twitter.com/lxbarth
Great idea
This is a very interesting project. Finding your contacts easily when you join a new community surely can improve user experience. Is the mentor already assigned?
I am interested
I have been talking to Roshan Shah and Kuldip Gohil about this idea....I am preparing a proposal on it...Already Drupal has integrated Yahoo...now its google
Mentoring this Project
Hi, We are reviewing the proposal that Sandip submitted and Kuldip Gohil from my team will be happy to mentor him.
Roshan
-- Global Software Consulting
http://www.gloscon.com
-- Global Software Consulting
http://www.gloscon.com
Thanks a lot
Thanks a lot....
I am interested
As a student, I'd like to help implement this idea.
More general approach
I've decided to steer away from this specific proposal and create my own: http://groups.drupal.org/node/10142
It's basically an API module that provides the common ground between all the Google data APIs.
I'm also working on this idea
I'm also working on a proposal on this idea considering this functionality can be implemented for other APIs. My approach uses interfaces in order to support future implementation of other web services (e.g. gmail, hotmail, opensocial) in the same module. It also allows that many clients (e.g. invite module, user relationships module) use its service: contact matching. While the core and its relation with database will have one implementation, it’s expected that we’ll have many API support implementations and many clients using it. Project scope would be to implement the core, the gmail (Google Contact Data API) implementation and a “client” that shows the user which of his previous contacts are in the social networking site.
I'd like to discuss these ideas before submitting my final application. Please take a look at http://groups.drupal.org/node/10161 and tell me what you think
More services can be merged
Yes, we can definitely merge more services into this module. Along with Google, it could also retrieve Yahoo, MSN and others. That would be great, and I am ready to do that. dcl_importer is probably doing it already, although I have some doubts about it. I would like to talk to the person who have made dcl_importer to clear up certain issues.
Social Integration
Sandip,
As you are alraeady talking with Kuldip who has already volunteered to mentor you, we can also help you to integrate lot more. We have already got some custom modules ( just not contributed) written and it would be great if a general Social Integration API or something like that can be built to integrate many more.
-- Global Software Consulting
http://www.gloscon.com
-- Global Software Consulting
http://www.gloscon.com
Absolutely
Yeah sure. I have come to know that you have already written a module for integrating Yahoo. Yes I could work on integrating more services into it creating a Social Integration API, which would grab Gmail, yahoo, myspace, facebook and many other. Of course there is dcl_importer but it for 5.x. Also as far as I have come to know it does not use Google API. So yes, it can be done
I'm also working on this idea
Its a good and nice idea, i have worked on drupal video module with upload and several pluggings, so I can easily work on this, Im sure some one will mentor.
-Heshan
Senior Drupal Developer at DrupalConnect
DCL_impoter
There's a issue http://drupal.org/node/208874 now it works! Approach is using Gdata api so most of code are already implemented but depends on php5 and CURL.
There's one project for Gmail
There's one project for Gmail contact https://www.drupal.org/project/gmail_contact