Implementing userPrefs with commoncontainer

[daviesd <da...@oclc.org>]

I¹m looking into implementing userPrefs with the commoncontainer, but I¹m
unclear as to what is implemented and what just needs to be extended.

My first step is to implement set_pref and register it with rpc.  I¹m
thinking of implementing this using the appData api (as I¹ve seen other
threads along those lines).  I realize appData needs to be extended to use a
persistent store.  I¹m not sure what the default implementation is using (in
memory?).  

I would then think I need to modify the server side to return these
userPrefs (overriding the ones from the gadget spec).  I¹m not sure where to
plug into here to use my persistent store.  It seems like the old container
way was for DefaultIframeUriManager to return this when it created the
iframe url.  But I¹m not sure that is what common container is doing.  I
think I need to plug into the gadgets.metadata request.

Also it appears that sites like iGoogle provide a user interface from within
the container to set the user prefs.  Is it the containers or the gadgets
responsibility to do this or a little bit of both?  I can see a horoscope
gadget using userPrefs to store a birthdate but not necessarily have to have
a separate settings panel like iGoogle provides.

Has anyone been through this process that would be willing to share what
they did?  Is this something that the commoncontainer will eventually
support out of the box?  How far off base am I with my thinking here?

Thanks,
Doug