Integrating Google Friend Connect

Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sun, 12/07/2008 - 11:58
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Unless you've been under a rock you know that Google recently opened up their Friend Connect service to the world. Friend Connect allows site builders to add a number of social features via widgets that Google calls gadgets. There are three main widgets currently available whose features I've summarized below.

  1. Members (pictured at right below) gives people the opportunity to join your site and displays pictures of users which link to the person's Google profile. This widget also allows people to "invite" other people to the site via email and a number of social bookmarking services.
  2. Wall adds comment functionality with the ability to link to Yo
  3. Review/Rate (pictured at left below) allows people to add star ratings along with comments to the site.

Friend Connect and Drupal

Friend Connect can easily be implemented on a Drupal site. All you have to do is cut and past ethe code provided by Google in order to add the functionality. See the video embedded below for a tutorial that shows me implementing FriendConnect on a WordPress site.

I don't think that the rating or wall features will be too helpful to Drupal site builders as that functionality is readily available via modules like Fivestar and Guestbook. If you're using Drupal as more of a blog without turning on the core sign-up and profile features then the members widget could be useful in building a soft community and adding to the viral nature of the site. I'm trying it out on the front page here.

Friend Connect Tutorial

Friend Connect Images  
Review and Rate Gadget
Ratings Widget Members Widget


 

Video Links
YouTube Version
Flash Version
Quicktime Version
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Comments

DokCiencia's picture
Submitted by DokCiencia (not verified) on Sun, 12/07/2008 - 18:14.

Video Doesn't Work

Hi. The video is not working. I tried watching it on your site and on BlipTV to no avail. Could you please look into this?

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sun, 12/07/2008 - 18:57.

Video Playback

I'm not sure what the issue is. It could be either a browser or flash version issue since I can see the video in both places. Try this direct download link to the Quicktime version.

Michael Wheatland's picture
Submitted by Michael Wheatland (not verified) on Sun, 12/07/2008 - 21:22.

Integration with Drupal

Just a question... Google friend connect cannot integrate with Drupal, can it?
If someone signs into G Friend connect while on your site to become a 'member' are they added to your site membership?
If not, why not?
I am a little lost as to how something like this will help your site without integration into the core system.

Michael Wheatland
http://www.goveonline.com

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sun, 12/07/2008 - 23:14.

Friend Connect won't sync

Friend Connect won't sync profile information with the Drupal database. What you have is the identity of people who visit your site with links to more information about them and what other sites they are a part of. I categorize something like that as "soft community" since it doesn't take advantage of the Drupal profile functionality or otherwise give "members" access to additional features.

Since Friend Connect is part of the OpenSocial (http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/) initiative being promoted by Google it is possible that developers could code Drupal modules that provide a deeper level of integration with Friend Connect and other OpenSocial programs.

Boris Mann's picture
Submitted by Boris Mann (not verified) on Sun, 12/07/2008 - 23:19.

Doesn't integrate

Google Friend Connect doesn't integrate with Drupal at all. It just embeds some JavaScript, but doesn't currently integrate with any local site functionality.

And that's kind of the problem with it. This is good (I guess?) to integrate into sites which can't host full social functionality, but this kind of overlay layer onto Drupal or even Wordpress is a little pointless...maybe even harmful for fostering your own community.

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Mon, 12/08/2008 - 09:50.

Centralized Profiles Are Good

I don't think that it's pointless or harmful. The web is changing. The ways that people use the web are changing. People are swamped by websites that offer memberships and profiles. I see the Friend Connect offering and OpenSocial initiative as vehicles for extending functionality without increasing the difficulty required in maintaining the site.

I can use this site as a case in point. I would like visitors to the site to be able to have an opportunity to discover other people, see what their doing and perhaps learn from them. Something like that can be accomplished by using Drupal many different features offered by the core and contributed modules of Drupal. But it also requires that visitors create another login and spend time updating a profile that's only good for this site.

The other option is to make use of the tools being offered by Google and others to allow people to represent on a site via a centralized profile that can be updated once and displayed everywhere the person chooses to "join" a site.

It's true that right now "integration" is limited to the user interface via a javascript embed code. But that's likely to change in the future. The OpenSocial Profile Container project looks like a good start and I hope to see it move forward.

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 12/16/2008 - 20:41.

Not really an integration

As @Boris Mann states, the widgets/gadgets are just dropped into a site and don't integrate with Drupal's user, comment, or rate functionalities.

Kevin's picture
Submitted by Kevin (not verified) on Sat, 01/31/2009 - 13:51.

Thanks

Rob,

Thanks for the tutorial. I finally managed to load it successfully.

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sat, 03/14/2009 - 12:47.

Google Friend Connect Integration

We've moved closer to "real" integration with Google Friend Connect. I just installed the new Drupal module that allows people to join and leave a quick comment. http://code.google.com/p/google-friend-connect-plugins/wiki/DrupalPlugin

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sat, 03/14/2009 - 13:01.

Friend Connect Problems

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work right now. Perhaps it's the theme. I'm going to have to look into this. I'm keeping track of the issue queue at http://code.google.com/p/google-friend-connect-plugins/issues/list.

arphaus's picture
Submitted by arphaus (not verified) on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 10:50.

Resolution?

I'm trying the plugin now and experiencing this exact issue. Does it take some time for it to start working, or did you actually have to do something to resolve the problem?

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 17:55.

Friend Connect Issue

There was a patch suggested in the forum on Google Code that worked. I can't find the issue where I got the answer though. It looks like the programmer of the plugin just posted a new version of the plugin so you may want to try that and see if you have different results. Check http://code.google.com/p/google-friend-connect-plugins/downloads/list.

arphaus's picture
Submitted by arphaus (not verified) on Fri, 04/10/2009 - 13:14.

Thanks, but still no dice :-(

Thanks, but still no dice :-( I'm not having any luck finding the patch either - any chance you can share your version?

RobertSafuto's picture
Submitted by RobertSafuto (not verified) on Fri, 04/10/2009 - 14:16.

Friend Connect Patch

I downloaded the most recent version and it didn't work either. So I reverted back to the original version. I also found that patch that I applied to the original version. That patch can be found at http://code.google.com/p/google-friend-connect-plugins/issues/detail?id=....

arphaus's picture
Submitted by arphaus (not verified) on Sun, 04/12/2009 - 11:46.

No dice - sucks for me. And

No dice - sucks for me. And it's a bit weird the programmer just presumed that clean urls would be off.

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sun, 04/12/2009 - 13:26.

The developer seems to be

The developer seems to be open to feedback on the module so I recommend that you post about your issues over on the Google Code site for the module.

arphaus's picture
Submitted by arphaus (not verified) on Sat, 04/18/2009 - 14:08.

Figures...

It works fine on another site I just installed it on - same version of Drupal. I'm guessing it has something to do with my theme. (the working module is the older one with the patch)

SimonMavsar's picture
Submitted by SimonMavsar (not verified) on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 16:55.

Hi, I am unable to get it

Hi, I am unable to get it properly working with niether of latest versions (from google friend connect page nor from drupal module page)...

Your solution (original with applied patch) seems to do the trick, so I was wondering if you could please tarball it and put tha package somewhere public so we could pull it off?

Thanks.

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sat, 07/11/2009 - 00:27.

FriendConnect Patch

I don't know that there's a need for that since the resolution only involves changing one line in friendconnect.js. That line is indicated at http://code.google.com/p/google-friend-connect-plugins/issues/detail?id=.... The original module download is at http://google-friend-connect-plugins.googlecode.com/files/drupal.zip.

suryaden's picture
Submitted by suryaden (not verified) on Sun, 03/22/2009 - 09:24.

Great

but i have problem, not smooth loading...

Dave Reid's picture
Submitted by Dave Reid (not verified) on Wed, 01/20/2010 - 11:37.

http://drupal.org/project/friendconnect

Robert, I'd love for you to check out the Drupal.org edition of the module at http://drupal.org/project/friendconnect. It had permission from the original plugin's maintainer and offers our Drupal community support and development. Now that there's a new project on Google Code by an entirely different team, we're trying to convince them again to bring development and their support to the Drupal.org hosted version (again).

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Thu, 01/21/2010 - 21:03.

Drupal Friend Connect

I will probably get them switched out this weekend. I see that you've recently committed some changes to the module. I was having problem with the original Google code and had to do a little patching to make that one work. Absolutely I would prefer to use a module via Drupal.org. It seems that Google hasn't been playing as nicely as they could be with the Drupal community. Thanks for stepping in an filling the gap. I see that there's a D7 release too. Very nice!

drupalista.com.br's picture
Submitted by drupalista.com.br on Sun, 08/21/2011 - 08:28.

Re: Integrating Google Friend Connect

Hi guys,

I have posted a patch for the Drupal 7 version that makes real integration too.

Here is the patch http://drupal.org/node/1245548#comment-4869830

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sun, 08/21/2011 - 20:42.

Re: Integrating Google Friend Connect

Thanks. I've also found that http://drupal.org/project/rpx works pretty well, and offers identity authentication for a variety of savings. The configuration is time consuming though.

drupalista.com.br's picture
Submitted by drupalista.com.br on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 14:11.

Re: Integrating Google Friend Connect

Yeah, I was aware of that project already. It works pretty well as you said. It is fine for a small websites, by small I mean with small number of people engaging on it, otherwise you must have a website that generates a good revenue or it can became very costly.