UPDATE 2/22/2012: As mentioned under the section Thoughts I have created a Codeplex project called WinLiveHelper. You can read more about it in this post.
Talk about good mojo! 7 days ago I was I was researching how to access Windows Live and SkyDrive from my Windows Phone 7. It just so happened to be the release date of the brand new Windows Live SDK that day, 7 Dec 2011. I now get the privilege to blog about my discoveries. Most of what I found is really good stuff. I’m going to let Microsoft do the heavy lifting on this one since their samples are quite good.
What is the Windows Live SDK?
The Windows Live SDK is a brand new SDK that encapsulates OAuth2 calls and the building of HTTP requests for Windows Live services. The SDK is very light and does not include model objects for calendars, files, etc. Microsoft has provided us with a Live Interactive SDK that walks through some of the available calls and allows the user to experiment with the JSON used.
What can I Access?
The documentation of what is available via the SDK is very comprehensive. The REST API is the one that I looked at. I’d feel like a member of the Redundant Department of Redundancy listing all of the capabilities of the API, so I’ll only mention a few: Albums, Audio, Calendars, Contacts, Folders, Files, Photos, and Videos. OK, so that’s most of them, but I’ll only talk about a few in specifics here.
Calendar
The Calendar portion of the API allows the developer to access all of the Calendars that the user has referenced in Windows Live. The developer can create, read, update, and delete a calendar. The developer can also create, read, update, and delete events on any of the calendars based on that user’s permissions on that calendar. This is a welcome API on the phone since developers can only read calendars and events in the current version of the OS.
SkyDrive (Folders and Files)
The same create, read, update, and delete capabilities that exist for calendars and contacts also exist now for SkyDrive. What I’m still working on is how to use SkyDrive to open a document on the phone from inside of a third-party application (not the Office Hub). Currently the phone only supports a Photo Chooser which cannot view Videos. I have a need to attach Videos and Files to a piece of information, and with the release of the Windows Live SDK developers can now access any uploaded file (video, audio, document, spreadsheet, etc.) that lives SkyDrive.
Thoughts
I’m hoping to create a light library of model objects that will work with JSON.NET for the phone that I’ll be able to pair with the Windows Live SDK. I’m very excited about the simplicity of the APIs and SDK. I’ve heard the horror stories of integrating Windows Live into an application prior to this SDK and set of APIs.