Accessing Soap Services from Google Gadgets

The earlier gadget projects I developed have utilized third-party web services from a variety of sources:

• Google Maps for geographic data
• Google Docs spreadsheet as XML datasource
  
• IP-Geolocation (IP address->Country) service from HostIP.Info
• User profile and gaming statistics as XML feeds from Xfire.

Given the constraints of a space-restricted, remotely-hosted, javascript-only application, gadgets primarily rely on web services to provide richer data content without the attendant complexity. However, javascript is beset by cross-domain restrictions that even impact xmlHttpRequest, the very underpinnings of Ajax. Since Google gadgets are javascript apps, the same-origin security policy prevents it from making requests outside the domain it is running on.

Although Google addressed this problem by providing the _IG_FetchXMLContent function, it lacks support for https, SOAP and POST. It looks like the newer gadget.io.makeRequest function is intended to address these deficiencies. However, the availability of the gadget.io.* functions in Google's production servers is yet forthcoming.

I decided not to hold my breath..

KT-Gadget is a widget front-end to KnowledgeTree - an open-source document management system. To access KnowledgeTree's SOAP services, I had to deploy another application to receive the requests from Google's _IG_FetchXMLContent calls, make the corresponding SOAP requests, and generate the appropriate XML output. Two basic functions are implemented: login and get_folder_contents. The functions are based on PHP, the same language that was used to develop KnowlegeTree.

After pushing the login button, the gadget will indicate the progress of the subsequent operations:

• Logging in
• Fetching Documents
• Sorting Documents

In its current state, the gadget is useful as a watcher of some sort of inbox for workflow-enabled documents like incoming faxes needing disposition or requisitions requiring approval. Sit around and watch your work pile up...

I plan to implement two more functions: download_document and perform_document_workflow_transition. We don't want work to pile up, do we? Other nice-to-have features: watch all accessible folders and sub-folders; show number of documents per folder; folder and document colors based on certain thresholds like document count, age, metadata contents (priority, etc); automatic refresh.

But don't hold your breath...