monkinetic weblog | redmonk.net

Steve Ivy, steveivy@gmail.com

PSN is a ruby library for consuming/providing Portable Social Network services in social web apps, written by Steve Ivy (http://redmonk.net). This code is GPL’d, and I hope that it will help others who are just starting out (like me! :-))

What Does It Do?

PSN provides a set of ruby classes that spider, parse and provide facilities for storing social network data. The basic classes are Profile and Friend (Person).

include PSN
profile = Profile.new_from_uri('http://redmonk.net/about-this-site', 
              :enforce_reciprocal_related=>true, 
              :do_related=>true)

puts "# NAME: #{profile.hcard.fn}"
puts "#{profile.hcard.note}"
pp profile

puts "## RELATED PROFILES"
profile.related_profiles.each do |uri, rp|
  puts "* #{uri} #{rp.hcard.fn} (from #{rp.uri})"
  rp.friends.each do |f|
    puts "** #{f.name} (#{f.link})"
  end
end

Goal

The goal is to create a library of classes that can be mixed into an existing application or used as a foundation for a new application. The app would provide basic storage, while the library makes it easy for the host app to consume and provide PSN services.

Try It Out

http://redmonk.net/svn/psn

Be aware that this is very very early code - only about 1/3rd of what I want to do has been done.

Further Reading

• Kevin Lawver: Portable Social Networks at Mashup Camp — I really want to see if this work and Kevin’s can be (ready drum roll) mashed up somehow
• Gavin Bell: What is your provenance?
• Jeremy Keith: Twittering

  Here’s what I want: when I go to the latest social networking fadsite, I want it to ask for my URL. Then it can go off and fetch my hCard and XFN list. A pre-filled form for my details and a pre-filled list of potential contacts can then be presented to me. I’m not saying that this should be the only way of signing up but wouldn’t it be a nice added extra for those of us already using microformats?

TODO:

So much:

• implement validation for reciprocal relationships on profile.related_profiles
• hcard -> profile
• friend list -> xfn

Done:

• implement validation for xfn relationships
• tests for Friend and relation vlidation