Is the WebOS calendar api really as limited as it sounds?

Question

A recent Ars Technica article rekindled my interest in WebOS so I was looking at the Services API (because I'm interested in building a replacement calendar app). I discovered the following text at the top of the calendar services API documentation:

Note: To prevent unauthorized use of private user data, this API provides access only to records created by your application; that is, you cannot access records owned by another application.

What is the point of even having an API if you can't access data created by other applications? At that point there would be no reason for me to use their API rather than building the data storage myself. Am I missing something? Can any WebOS developers weigh in on this?

P.S. If they named their os "WebOS" you would think they'd know something about sane URLs. Check out that ridiculous calendar api doc url!!

Answer 1

The reason for the limited access is because of security, but not just that. Some services have agreements that limit how their data can be used. For example, having an API that would let a random webOS app access your Facebook calendar data would be working around the FaceBook terms of service that control how that data can be used. The same applies to LinkedIn, Google Calendar, and any other service from which the system is pulling information.

If you just need to post an occasional event, there's a better API to use that lets you cross-launch the calendar app with data that the user can accept into their own calendar. That way, you don't create your own bucket, but the user has to manually accept the event.

The reason to use the calendar APIs is to expose your own data to the user of the device. FlightView, for example, uses it to publish a calendar to the user of upcoming flights that he or she is interested in, and if those get rescheduled, it can automatically change them. The Fandango app uses this to push movie times for theaters the user likes into their calendar view. There's lots of possibilities.