Technology Insights

AppDirect Implements Integration Changes to Maximize Your App’s Reach

By Christophe Levesque / February 8, 2012

We've recently partnered with some exciting new high-profile companies to build their cloud services marketplaces. This means we will be extending our network's reach even further, maximizing exposure for apps that have integrated with AppDirect.

An important distinction of these upcoming marketplaces is that they are each hosted on a separate infrastructure, and have their own dedicated servers and databases. To accommodate these different configurations, we modified the integration process to provide access to all our app stores for every app. Here’s what’s new:

• The event listener endpoint can now receive an {eventUrl} parameter (instead of the current {token} parameter).
• This URL can be called to read information about the event (the same way as before, except that the URL doesn't have to be manually built) and will point at the marketplace which the event was triggered on.
• As part of the event XML we've also added a new element called "marketplace" which gives the application developers more information about which marketplace the event was triggered on.
• The OpenID of the users will no longer be tied to the www.appdirect.com host but will reflect the marketplace hosting the user (https://businessapps.bell.ca/openid/id/{user UUID}) and can be passed to the application OpenID consumer using the {openid} placeholder.

We've designed this new integration process to be fully backward compatible. The new code is available now, and we’ve confirmed that everything is working as expected. We've also updated the API docs to reflect these changes, and added new data to the Integration Events logs in your AppDirect developer account. Please review both of these, and send any feedback or questions you might have to developer@appdirect.com.

We're really excited about these upcoming marketplaces, and will update you when they launch. Be sure to upgrade your integration code as soon as possible to ensure your app’s optimal availability.