Shindig is an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 project which began in December 2007 to provide a reference implementation

Reference implementation

In the software development process, a reference implementation is the standard from which all other implementations, with their attendant customizations, are measured, and to which all improvements are added...

 for the OpenSocial

OpenSocial

OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces for web-based social network applications, developed by Google along with MySpace and a number of other social networks.It was released November 1, 2007....

 standard. The software contains both server-side and client-side code. Once the project is mature, an installation of this product will be capable of rendering OpenSocial gadgets in a web browser.

Features

In the announcement for Shindig's first code commit, four primary features of Shindig were cited:

• Gadget Container JavaScript
  JavaScript
  JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
  
  -- core JavaScript foundation for general gadget functionality. This JavaScript manages security, communication, UI layout, and feature extensions, such as the OpenSocial API.
• Gadget Server -- an open source version of gmodules.com, which is used to render the gadget XML into JavaScript and HTML for the container to expose via the container JavaScript.
• OpenSocial Container JavaScript -- JavaScript environment that sits on top of the Gadget Container JavaScript and provides OpenSocial specific functionality (profiles, friends, activities).
• OpenSocial Gateway Server -- an open source implementation of the server interface to container-specific information, including the OpenSocial REST APIs, with clear extension points so others can connect it to their own backends.