John Musser, September 21st, 2007 Comments(3)

In a notable but understated move, Google announced yesterday the availability of the GData JavaScript Client Library for Calendar. While on the surface this may seem like just another wrapper for the Google Calendar API like the ones provided for PHP and Java it’s actually a lot more interesting. Why? Because it’s one of the first examples of the next generation client-side APIs: one that doesn’t just let you fetch data, it lets you write data as well. If you use our advanced API search you can see we now have 32 JavaScript APIs cataloged at PW, but these are nearly all read-only.

Probably the quintisential JavaScript-based API is the Google Maps API which has been used to create vast numbers of read-only mashups. In contrast, this new library allows the whole set of classic CRUD operations on Google Calendars: create, read, update and delete. You can get authenticated access to private data as well as running mashups on any domain. For more background on this new library check-out Dion Almaer’s video interview with Google developer Jun Yang.

We currently have 20 Google Calendar mashups listed here and with this flexible client API there will probably be a new set of applications coming soon.

The move towards more robust JavaScript APIs along with increasing support of the JSON data format are two related trends you’ll see opening-up a lot more opportunities for developers to create lightweight, dynamic mashups with no server-side programming.