Google + OAuth + OpenID = Google Friend Connect.

They’ve done it again, the boys over at google has released a full javascript API for their Friend Connect services. Which uses services like OAuth and OpenID to authenticate users on your website, and then provide all of the social networking features they want!

taken from official homepage:
“Google Friend Connect lets site owners instantly awaken and strengthen the community that visits their web site. Friend Connect:

• Makes it easy for every site owner to add Friend Connect to their site regardless of their technical capabilities.
• Uses open standards to let visitors control their own data and freely share it with sites and services as they see fit. Services include OpenID providers like Yahoo, social network providers like Twitter, and update aggregators like Plaxo Pulse.

Friend Connect APIs enable developers to:

• Integrate social flows and data directly within a page’s markup, via the OpenSocial standard specification.
• Integrate existing login systems, registered users, and existing data with new social data and activities.
• Create social gadgets & services that are embeddable within millions of Friend Connect enabled sites.”

The factsheet, code examples, tutorials, and more after the turn!

(more…)

is an “open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.”

What does OAuth really mean?

Well, lets break the above description down into some key phrases and the pieces should come together.

• a “protocol” is a standardized method for the communication of two computers. For instance HTTP is the standardized way of a webserver communicating with your computer when you browse a website.
• “open” comes from the fact that this protocol is open source and can be viewed, downloaded, and maintained by anyone who is willing to take up the torch.
• “secure API authorization” is the functionality that OAuth.net gives to its stakeholders – the ability for a developer to download OAuth.net and secure their API access without having to write a unique (and possibly bug filled) authentication!

Brief History of OAuth

With its draft and proposal process starting in April of 2006, and the first lines of code made available in Augest 2007, OAuth.net is young but has seen some massive uptake.

Originally draft to solve problems integrating OpenID with twitter.com (the microblogging site we all know and love), OAuth had google’s interest from the beginning when DeWitt Clinton from Google (a “corporate member” of the OpenID Foundation) got interested, “if only as a stakeholder”.

With its contributors looking to have every major language covered, OAuth should allow any developer to take advantage of the strength of open-source in their API Authentication process!

The Google Story and 15 Resources to Get Started with OAuth when you (more…)