Category: Social Networking

Integrate Social Sign On in your PHP apps using HybridAuth

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nt.social.network.big_

Integrating social sign-ons in a web application can become a tedious task because you need to take care of different endpoints, credentials and finally manage the oauth dance to get the access token. However, using HybridAuth package, this task can be easy as pie 🙂 Let’s have a look

In this example I will show you how to connect to Facebook and Twitter using HybridAuth. So you need to create two applications in Facebook and Twitter each. Save those app’s id and secret somewhere because we will need that in a minute.

Step 1: Install the Package via Composer

Composer is an excellent package manager for PHP apps. Let’s use that to install HybridAuth in our current projects scope. Add a composer.json file in your project path, or update it with the following contents if it already exists. But before that, make sure that you have composer installed in this machine.

[sourcecode language=”javascript”]
{
"require": {
"hybridauth/hybridauth": "3.0.0.*@dev"
}
}
[/sourcecode]

now run the following command to install hybridauth

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
composer install
[/sourcecode]

Step 2: Connect with Facebook

Let’s make a good use of this HybridAuth. This time we need to create two files, fb.php and hybrid.php. Make sure that your facebook app’s callback url points to this hybrid.php. FOllowing is the code of fb.php (more…)

Building services like FriendFeed using PHP – Part2

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Following the first installment in this series, here is the second part. In this part I will focus mainly on Bookmarking and News services supported by FriendFeed . Here we go

Supported bookmarking services by FriendFeed
1. Del.icio.us
2. Furl
3. Google shared stuffs
4. Mag.nolia
5. Stumbleupon

Except google shared stufss, all of the rests require just an username to generate the access point for retrieving user’s bookmarked items. And for the google shared stuffs, it requires the fully functional url of the feed available from your google bookmark service.

Access points

Del.icio.us

AP: http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/<user name>
example: http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/anduh

Furl

AP: http://rss.furl.net/member/<user name>.rss;
example: http://rss.furl.net/member/pigge.rss

Google Shared Stuffs
you can find your google shared stuff url from http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff

example: http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff?user=110703083499686157981&output=rss

Ma.gnolia

AP: http://ma.gnolia.com/rss/lite/people/<user name>.rss;
example: http://ma.gnolia.com/rss/lite/people/gerryquach

Stumbleupon
Whoops, Double Whoops, Tripple Whoops. It took quite a time for me to find the feed url. I dont know why it is kept so “SECRET” – LOL

AP: http://www.stumbleupon.com/syndicate.php?stumbler=<user name>.rss;
example: http://www.stumbleupon.com/syndicate.php?stumbler=jd001

Supported news services by FriendFeed
1. Digg
2. Google Reader
3. Mixx
4. Reddit

Here are the access points

Digg

AP: http://digg.com/users/<user name>/history.rss;
example: http://digg.com/users/msaleem/history.rss

Google Reader

You can find your shared item’s feed url here http://www.google.com/reader/view/user/-/state/com.google/broadcast

Mixx

Unfortunately during the time of writing this article, Mixx was napping – here is the screenshot. Once they are awake, I will update this section 🙂

Reddit

AP: http://www.reddit.com/user/<user name>/.rss;
example: http://www.reddit.com/user/jack_alexander/.rss

In next installation I will focus on scaling such a huge load successfully. Hope that will be interesting to many of you. Following installation will focus again on the access points.

Building services like FriendFeed using PHP – Part 1

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Friendfeed is an excellent life streaming service aggregating all your feeds from different service providers, compile them together, build a social network among your known people and finally deliver all these feeds as a mashup. As a result you can immediately track activities of your friends on all the different service they use (like jaiku, twitter, flickr) and stay up-to-date. Hats off to the developers of FriendFeed for delivering such a nice application to us.

In this blog post I will try to focus on how to develop such a service like Friendfeed using PHP and JS and how to scale such a huge load successfully. Previously I’d also written another article focusing “How to develop services like SpringLoops using PHP“. The complete article will be delivered in multiple installments and in current installment, I will focus on Photo sharing services used by friendfeed.

Area to focus
1. Services to be supported
2. Update discovery
3. Parsing the feeds
4. Storing the data
5. Scaling

FriendFeed parses feeds from a total of 35 popular services from around the web 😉 – lets have a look at them one by one and I will give you idea about the access points of these services. Though Not all of them are feed, so I will try to focus those services as well to give you a basic idea.

Service 1 : Flickr
Usable PHP Library: PHPFlickr

Flickr is an excellent photo sharing services under the banner of Yahoo. Friendfeed parses all the photo from a user and also the list of his/her favorite photos. Given an username you can easily find the Flickr ID like (76536911@N00)of that user and once you got it, here is the access points for list of public photos and favorites

List of photos
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=<user’s flickr id>&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
example: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=76536911@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

List of favorites
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_faves.gne?nsid=<user’s flickr id>&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
example:http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_faves.gne?nsid=76536911@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

Service 2: Picasa Web Album
Picasa is another photo sharing service under the banner of the Giant, Google. Given a picasa user name , here are the access point of user’s public photos

List of public photos
http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/<picasa user name>?kind=album&alt=rss&hl=en_US&access=public
example:http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/countdraculla?kind=album&alt=rss&hl=en_US&access=public

Service 3: Smugmug
Here comes another photo sharing service where users can buy and sell their photos. Given a smugmug user name you can find the feed of this user’s photos

List of public photos
http://<smugmug user name>.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=nickname&Data=Ifocus&format=rss200
example:http://ifocus.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=nickname&Data=Ifocus&format=rss200

Service 4: Zoomr
Zoomr is another photo sharing service started in late 2005 by Kristopher Tate as a place for him to share photos with his friends and later became a public services, is currently supported by FriendFeed. And here we go with the access points 🙂

List of public photos
http://www.zooomr.com/services/feeds/public_photos/?id=<zoomr user name>&format=rss_200
example:http://www.zooomr.com/services/feeds/public_photos/?id=wolfmank&format=rss_200

In next part, I will highlight the access points of supported bookmark services and news services supported by FriendFeed 🙂 Have a nice weekend.

Water Clogged People in Bangladesh – Let's help them out!

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Hello all,

This mail is involves approximately one hundred thousand people, living in a remote place of Jessore named Vobodoho Upazilla. Many of you may already know about this issue. For those who do not know about this, about one hundred thousand people in three villages of Vobodoho Upazilla in Jessore have been water clogged for more than a year. All their lands are under water. Therefore, they cannot cultivate anything. Their houses and roads areunder water, too. As a result, they cannot lead normal life. Water clogging is not a new issue in Bangladesh. This situation it did not arise from flood. It’s a man made disaster. It has occured due to the formation of sluice gate there. Therefore, it does not have any natural solution.

This water is not going anywhere unless the authority does something about the sluice gates. It was decided on November 2005 that the situation would be dealt on an emergency basis. But, needless to day, no help reached to the villagers. If anyone wants to know more information about this issue, here is the web site link:

http://bhobodoho.blogspot.com/

This blog is being maintained by the Drishtipat Virginia(USA). Our objective is twofold

1. To raise awareness
2. To donate those people

Those people are badly in need of food, medicine and other stuffs. But, raising awareness is more important than donation. We can give donation which will temporarily solve the problem. But, people have to be aware of this. Otherwise, the NUMB authority of Bangladesh is never going to pay any heed to the demand of those people.

Students of BRAC University have currently done a video on youthtube about this issue. It gives a vivid picture of the sufferings of those people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =w6jbUi4VTDw

Muhammad Jafar Iqbal recently wrote an article in Prothom Alo ocussing those people.

http://www.shuchinta.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09 /mziSep2706.pdf

Now, in order to raise awareness we are thinking of doing a manob bondhonat Shahid Minar. A tentative date for the event is 20 Dec. A few members from Dristipat Virginia will be visting Bd during that time.

We are trying to get some Big names along with us to have greater attention. A press release will be issued to involve media. We need people. The more people we have the stronger the event.

Our earnest request to everyone .please spread this news…..only 17 more days to the event…..

Hope to see you all there………

LETS DO IT

Drishtipat Virginia