Mash Up APIs and Integrations with Social Network Websites Using Ruby-on-Rails

Situation

• A California based start-up Software Company specializing in cost effective mobile applications wanted to quickly extend its solutions to leverage the benefits of social networking

Challenge

• Develop a cross-platform web application that needed data to be fetched from multiple portals to be showcased as a custom page
• Provide Single-Sign-On across multiple portals
• Provide social collaboration using Facebook and Twitter
• Provide User data Security (Blocking cross site request forgery blocking and Malicious requests)

Harbinger Solution

• Adapted Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach for system design using Agile practices
• and RoR DRY principles
• Leveraged Web Services to fetch external data
• Seamless integration with Facebook and Twitter
• Session based implementation with digested session cookie and inbuilt RSS / ATOM feeds
• Testing and Audit by specialized security experts

Technologies & Tools

• Rails 3
• REST API for web services
• Facebook and Twitter Plug-ins: FaceBooker, TwitterAuth
• Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Benefits

• Improved productivity and reduced time-to-market by faster integration with social portals
• Platform independent and secure solution
• Better application maintainability due to Ruby-on-Rails DRY principles