Chapter 11 – Using Tools to Create Mashups

Google Mashup Editor (GME) (now defunct, see Google App Engine)

Yahoo!Pipes

Creating mashups is difficult due to the need to learn how to use multiple APIs and knit together information from divergent sources. A framework such as RDF promises to make this easier to accomplish, due to standardization. Cites http://simile.mit.edu/ as an example of a project that provides a practical way to look at Semantic Web technology. Tools facilitate reuse of code, “simplify the routine stuff,” allowing the developer to focus on solving problems at a more abstract level.

The example in this chapter involves building a mashup that shows geotagged photos retrieved via the Flickr API on a Google map. It uses GME and Yahoo!Pipes to extend a mashup created in Chapter 10 using PHP and JavaScript. Now that GME is dead, it appears that you can’t actually run the code developed in this chapter, which is unfortunate. Yee provides an example of iterative app building, however, and it is interesting to note how GME tags, HTML and JavaScript all get jumbled together in a single file.

GME was a text-based programming environment; Yahoo!Pipes is visual. Yahoo!Pipes can convert XML to RSS 2.0.  Chapter 4 includes a tutorial on using Yahoo!Pipes.

Google Code provides hosted Subversion services for software development. Appears to be free.

Advantages of using mashup tools like GME and Yahoo!Pipes:

• Server is hosted, no need to run you own
• Hosting server takes care of server-side (i.e. PHP) functionality, so no knowledge of PHP is required; only have to know some JavaScript to handle client-side processing
• Access to Subversion services
• Access to apps/code snippets/ideas/tips from other developers working with tools
• Makes it easier for developers to quickly implement/test ideas, esp. in situations where they don’t have a long-term stake in a particular application.

Disadvantages of using mashup tools:

• Each tool requires you to learn a new framework
• Sometimes tools don’t give you exactly what you want/need
• Must reveal code to host, and your code is “branded” to a particular host
• Application is dependent upon host; problematic if host discontinues service (as GME already has)
• Allows non-programmers to create mashups, but leaves them vulnerable if they are dependent upon the underlying services for production applications.

Yee’s overall assessment of mashup tools like GME and Yahoo!Pipes: “I think that the GME and Yahoo! Pipes makes it easier for programmers to create certain types of mashups, though it’s not so clear whether they open up mashup development for a nonprogramming audience.”

Useful links from this chapter:

• Raymond Yee’s Google Code projects
• Raymond Yee’s Yahoo!Pipes
• Example code/apps from the book

Yee provides a useful table of mashup tools near the end of the chapter. I created an annotated version of this table and published it via Google Docs.