Question

I am working on a windows application where i want to display orkut user profile details like name, profile pic, albums. Is there some way can I can access user profile data on my windows form using C#.

Answer 1

Yes, there is. But the path is not that simple.

First of all, and most important, you need to decide the way you will authenticate users. There are two ways:

• 2 legged
• 3 legged

Both can be found in more detail here and use the OAuth protocol.

In the case of 2 legged your user can enter userName and Password straight away in your application but you need to register a orkut gadget in order to obtain a consumer key and secret. The consumer key must be registered by Orkut team in order to grant access to your application. But this method will no longer be supported in the future.

Basically in the 3-legged, the Orkut user will be re-directed to a google account authentication page. So your application will need to manage a browser open/close authentication etc. There’s an java api available here

That was the most complicated part. Once you have your access key, you can submit requisitions using JSon protocol using opensocial requests. There are C# libs for that.