LinkedIn Status roadmap brainstorm

There is currently no roadmap, as the future of the module will depend on feature requests. As always, the main problem lies in time.
Concerning the feature requests you've made so far, what I plan is, in order :

1. Update LinkedIn status on comments : it's the easier of the three and should be quite rapid to set up (assign this to myself, might be available next week if I find time to work on it this WE).
2. CCK integration : quite a bigger work, but I guess it is quite essential. I think it should be the next "big step" for the module. I cannot however talk about a deadline.
3. Login through LinkedIn : must be feasible, but I'm not very familiar with Drupal login mechanism, so will need to figure out first how all that works.

We for sure are looking for reviewers, thank you. All changes will step by step go to -dev release, available to be downloaded and tested.
I will post here as soon as the "update status on comments" is commited.

PS:
Just a first thought opinion here. Greg might have other plan/views, all that needs to be discussed.

Hi guys,

We're curious to see what can be done as the API matures, things like posting Events, posting Jobs, posting Discussions, etc. via the API - that's our focus. We're less interested in pulling data *from* LinkedIn and more interested in sending data *to* LinkedIn, but we need to wait patiently as these features are unveiled.

As for the other stuff, I think both CCK *and* core Profile module field mappings would both be an excellent idea. Core profile would be more useful that CCK for the general public, as Content Profile is something of an edge case, though widely used and very useful.

So, my preferred route would be:

1. Get field mapping to core Profile fields in Drupal 6

2. Login to Drupal with LinkedIn credentials (if possible with the LinkedIn API, this can probably be lifted from the Twitter module almost entirely, since both use the OAuth module, I think?)

** START DRUPAL 7 BRANCH **

3. Replace Drupal 6 profile field mapping with Drupal 7 core field mapping (content_profile will be following a similar route, worth talking to fago to understand how we can make this work with his module *and* with Drupal 7 core profile.module ... I think/hope now fields is in core there is no different between a node field and a user profile field in Drupal 7?)

4. Get status post on comment (I don't think many people will want this, but if it's easy to add, why not?)

That would be my prefered priority order, but I'm not bothered enough to argue about it. ;-)

Ok, we need to catch all the *individual* feature requests that are emerging in this thread and raise separate issues for them - this is getting out of hand, but I think the chat is valuable, so re-titling - we'll re-raise the individual issues later in their own issue posts.

Switched out update status on comments to #742960: Update status on comments so that we can focus on profile.
Linking Linkedin infos with profile fields seems great, as it leave site admins the choice of mixing local infos with ones from Linkedin ( or not to use local info, should they want to)
I'm in the process of trying to know :
1. How to keep it flexible without making it a headache to set up (from a site admin point of view)
2. How to code it, of course (that is, where is the best place to hook).

Providing a textfield the user could fill with keywords corresponding to the fields he wants to retrieve from linkedin could be a good starting point (similar to the use of tokens, with the difference that the keywords would be those from http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1061

I guess all that will also lead to a caching mechanism, as Linkedin API requests are limited...

Chaos is cool, we can sort it out later. It's kinda like putting a Dictaphone on the table. All good. ;-)

@bellesmanieres I smell another module here...

There are lots of cases where you might want to map CCK fields to something else. For example, I'm a co-maintainer on the NITF Views module - it's on our radar to allow mapping of CCK fields to elements of the NITF XML format in the Views UI. There must be other modules already doing this too, for example maybe the Deploy module does? (I'm totally guessing.)

I guess where I'm heading is a separate CCK Field Mapper module providing an API and UI for mapping CCK fields to *something* could be used by this module and anything else!

That would be *really* cool. =)

@Greg,
Providing a generic field mapping mechanism could be great, but I have some difficulties to figure out what it should do and how. Although they do not provide any UI, there is nothing that cannot be achieved using Computed Fields and/or Views Custom Field.
An UI for mapping could be useful thought, my main doubt being how to retrieve and present to end user the data to map, as it can be parsed almost anywhere ($node object, $user, modules db fields, variables, ...)
Or that would involves module dev somehow 'declare' they data to the Field Mapper module, but in that case, it seems a bit like redoing the token module.

Might be worth posting at http://groups.drupal.org/contributed-module-ideas to get a more precise view of what it should look like ?

@deltab : we have to be very careful with relations (nothing technical there, just policy : see http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1091)

I'll post something over there in Groups about the CCK stuff. Or rather, probably Drupal 7 core fields.

FYI, raised it here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/56998

And also happened across this: http://drupal.org/project/feedapi_mapper
But it's unsupported. Maybe we should use it and then provide some justification for it not being dropped as a separate module?

I've asked Alex @ Development Seed for his thoughts.

Alex reckons this is a perfect use case for Feeds and that's what it's for:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/56998#comment-161043

I think I need to read up on using Feeds as a field mapper. Sounds like this is the way forward.

As a short term workaround, to let more choice in the profile display, I'm currently adding a select field on the admin page :
Choices are :
-disabled (don't use the feature)
-tab (display Linked profile as a tab, like current)
-profile item (display Linked profile as an item in the user profile)
-hidden (don't display profile, but make it available as an array within $account object)
I will try to add a documentation page on install and settings.

I might also add a "block" choice ? It's quite easy to do but I don't really know if there is an use case (I was thinking of "Panels" users ?)

More powerful than Block would be a Views handler to expose LinkedIn profile as a Field in the Views 2 interface. Then it can be a block, a page, a feed, an item on a page, etc. =)

subscribing

@greg - views integration is exactly what I'm looking for. I want to display both the LinkedIn profile fields + other fields/data on the same page. I was hoping to be able to do this with views, but it won't be possible. I'm going to have to do it through the .tpl + some creative CSS for now ... BOOOOOOO to that.

Closing this for 6, we'll probably need another round for D7.