Microfeed Documentation

0.1

Microfeed is a specification and a reference implementation of client-server architecture providing access to various information sources that have a feed-type interface. Examples of those feed sources include micro-blogging services, such as Jaiku, Twitter, Laconi.ca, and FriendFeed. By utilizing Microfeed architecture, the client application can focus on user interface, while the actual feed fetching in done in the background independently. The communication between the local server publishing information about the feeds and the client application displaying that information to an user is done with the DBus messaging following the publisher-subscriber principle.

The local server is called provider. There can be - and usually are - many providers, one for each micro-blogging or similar service, and thus a provider can focus solely on polling one service. A provider may be instantiated and configured several ways at the same time, for example, with different service URLs or authentication information. One configuration forms a publisher, and thus a publisher is a configured instance of a provider that provides the access to the service.

The client application is acting as a subscriber. It subscribes the feeds it is interested. A publisher sends a notification each time an item is added into, changed in, or removed from the feed. It also notifies the changed status of the feed itself. One publisher can serve multiple subscribers at the same time.

If you are implementing a publisher, you need the following modules: MicrofeedPublisher, MicrofeedFeed, MicrofeedItem, and MicrofeedConfiguration. It is strongly adviced that you use also MicrofeedProvider. You may also find useful the following modules: MicrofeedMain.

If you are implementing a subscriber, you need the following modules: MicrofeedSubsrciber and MicrofeedItem. It is highly propable that you need also MicrofeedConfiguration. You may also find useful the following modules: MicrofeedMain.

The following modules are used internally in the implementation, but can be utilized also outside: MicrofeedDatabase, MicrofeedStore, and MicrofeedThread.