Live Services – What are they?

  • Article

Live Services

 

Live Services are a set of building blocks within the Azure Services Platform for handling user data and application resources which can connect your application to hundreds of millions of users and devices.The following APIs are available to Live Services developers.

 

APIs are available

 

Live Services SDK is a suite of APIs for programmatic access of various Windows Live services, from other web sites or applications. It allow developers to build applications and mashups using Windows Live service components. It currently offers the following application programming interfaces (APIs):

 

Alerts

Enable developers familiar with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to programmatically integrate with Windows Live Alerts notification service and perform administrative tasks

 

Data - Windows Live Data

Allow developers to ask Windows Live users for permission to access Windows Live services and data on the user's behalf. Currently this service only exposes Windows Live Contacts.

 

Before accessing Windows Live Data, a Web site must obtain a user's permission to read and/or write data on the user's behalf. Windows Live Data supplies a mechanism by which your site can ask the user to grant a set of permissions and utilize those permissions to access the user's data.

 

Example

Suppose you were the developer of The Volcano Coffee Company's Web site, and you wanted to make it easy for your customers to ship coffee to their friends. One way to do this would be to take advantage of your customers' Windows Live Contacts address books. If this were a one-time shipment to be shipped immediately, you could obtain the user's contacts using the Windows Live Contacts Control.

 

On the other hand, if there was a possibility of repeated shipments—let's say your customer buys a one year subscription to the 'Volcano Coffee of the Month Club' for his or her friends—then it would become critical to ensure that the shipping addresses of your customer contacts were up-to-date.

 

If you need access to information stored by Windows Live services not once, but multiple times, even when the user is not signed in, then Windows Live Data can be the solution.

 

The Windows Live Data system supplies one mechanism by which:

 

Your site can ask for a set of permissions.

The user can grant or deny the permissions.

Your site can then utilize the granted permissions to access the data.

 

 

 

 

Contacts - Windows Live Contacts

Enable developers to programmatically submit queries to and retrieve results from the Windows Live Contacts address book database

 

The Windows Live Contacts API defines a set of Web services that enables customers to programmatically access the Windows Live Contacts Address Book database.

 

The Windows Live Contacts Web service is exposed to clients in a HTTP/GET request interface with XML response.

 

This API is intended for customers and partners who want to take advantage of the Address Book service known as Windows Live Contacts.

 

Shopping Site Scenario

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb463941.aspx

 

Expo

Enable developers to programmatically access the Windows Live Expo classifieds listings database.

 

The Windows Live Expo API defines a set of web services allowing developers to programmatically access the Expo classified listings database – a collection of location-tagged classified listings in categories like merchandise, real estate, autos, jobs, local events and commercial services

 

Spaces and Feeds - Windows Live Spaces

Basic functionality of Windows Live Spaces includes:

Blogs - including support for comments, trackbacks, and RSS

Photos - including support for grouping by album, comments, and RSS

Lists - including Music lists, Movie lists, Book lists, and support for RSS

Friends - including tags and notes on friends and support for RSS

Profile - including basic info, personal info (defaulted to non-public), work info, and social info

Guestbook - for visitors to comment on the space

 

Spaces MetaWeblog

Enable external programs to get and set the text and attributes of Windows Live Spaces weblog posts. Enables weblog entries to be written, edited, and deleted using web services.

 

The API is implemented as an XML-RPC web service with three methods whose names describe their function: metaweblog.newPost(), metaweblog.getPost() and metaweblog.editPost().

 

These methods take arguments that specify the blog author's username and password along with information related to an individual weblog entryu

 

Search (Live Search)

Allow developers faimiliar with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to submit queries programatically to and return results from the Live Search Engine

 

 

Microsoft adCenter API

Enable developers to create applications that create and manage Microsoft adCenter campaigns, obtain the status on advertisements, pause and resume orders, generate keyword estimates and performance reports, and perform order targeting