To effectively use plugjam, you should be a proficient software developer and experienced with Object Oriented programming. If you are proficient with one or more of the following (Spring, Groovy, Java, Grails, Ruby-on-Rails) learning plugjam should be very simple. Currently, we officially support the following client libraries: PHP, Java, Grails, Ruby, and Connect for the iPhone. We unofficially support pretty much every other language including JavaScript, .NET, ASP, Perl, Python and many more since you are accessing our REST API.
An API key is the unique identifier for you as a developer and your application(s). All web service requests require an API key to identify requests. Each user of an application may use the same API key however, developers must request an API key for each application they build. When you create your application, plugjam automatically assigns an API Key to you. You include this key when you submit calls to the plugjam Platform.
The game development industry has evolved to the point where they don’t have to start from scratch in order to develop a very complex game. They use game engines that incorporate the common functions required for today’s games such as physics, rendering, artificial intelligence, etc. By doing so they free the developer from having to develop these very complex components and allow them to focus on developing the next great game.
The plugjam Platform is to education software development as a game engine is to game software development. It is a complete application development platform, capable of supporting virtually all rich application development requirements—as a service. It features an extensive set of open APIs, a comprehensive data model for education, reusable software components, all of the complex mechanisms needed to deliver reliable and scalable applications, and a suite of ready-to-use applications.
We released the plugjam Platform alpha in 2007 so developers could focus on creating education applications and not worry about the complex plumbing necessary for today's web applications. You can build rich applications that run on plugjam that are highly scaleable, secure, leverage open standards, and allow you to more rapidly deliver functionality.
CommonNeed strives to make backward compatibility easy when using the plugjam platform, but we highly recommend that your new applications use the most recent version of the plugjam WSDL file to fully exploit the benefits of richer features and greater efficiency.
Each new plugjam release consists of two components:
We maintain support for each API version across releases of the platform software. The API is backward compatible in that an application created to work with a given API version will continue to work with that same API version in future platform software releases.
CommonNeed does not guarantee that an application written against one API version will work with future API versions: Changes in method signatures and data representations are often required as we continue to enhance the API. However, we strive to keep the API consistent from version to version with minimal if any changes required to port applications to newer API versions.