Introduce new os:Link Data Pipeline Element

[mmarum-sugarcrm]

Original author: [email protected] (April 07, 2012 20:06:17)

SPECIFICATION BUGS ONLY - Description
=====================================
Introduce a new os:Link element as a possible replacement for os:HttpRequest ... and tie it to the Link element... for instance:

<Module>
<ModulePrefs>
<Link rel="prefetch" label="foo" href="http://example.org" />
</ModulePrefs>
<Data>
<os:Link label="foo" />
</Data>
</Module>

When the container renders the gadget, it will first process all prefetch links, precaching the result... then when the data pipeline elements are processed, it would see the os:Link and use the referenced Link element to pump the resulting data into the DataContext for the view.

Using this approach, combined with some of the other suggestions listed above, we can achieve some rather interesting use cases... for instance, pipelining data from an external service into the datacontext declaratively..

<Module>
<ModulePrefs>
<Link rel="external-service" label="foo" href="opensocial:my.external.service" />
</ModulePrefs>
<Data>
<os:Link label="foo" />
</Data>
</Module>

This currently is not possible given the current gadget spec design unless the external service is accessed in code and the data is pumped into the datacontext programmatically.

Document affected:
==================
1.) Please attach a patch for the document if appropriate.
2.) Post a thread at
http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-and-gadgets-spec/topics
linking to this issue report.
3.) Post a comment on this issue, linking back to the thread.

Original issue: http://code.google.com/p/opensocial-resources/issues/detail?id=1296