Social Graph Connections
One of the most useful features of Usergrid is the ability to create
connections between entities, which allow you to model arbitrary
relationships between entities. This feature is particularly powerful
when applied to user entities by allowing you to model complex social
graphs between users as well as groups of users.
Following/followers
To make the social graph possibilities of entity connections even easier
to achieve, Usergrid also has special support for a default
following/followers relationship, which offers these additional
features:
Reciprocal connection: If a following connection is made between a user
and another user, a reciprocal followers relationship will be created
automatically. In contrast, all of other entity connections are one-way,
meaning any reciprocal relationship must be created manually.
Activity feed subscription: The followed user’s activities will
automatically be posted to the following user’s activity feed. For
example, if Arthur is following Ford, then any activities published by
Ford that Arthur is allowed to see will appear in Arthur’s activity
feed.
Creating a following/followers connection
To create a following/followers connection between two entities, create
the connection as you would any generic entity connection. For full
details on creating connections, see Connecting
entities.
For example, the following request would create a following/followers
relationship between two user entities with the usernames ‘Fred’ and
‘Barney’:
POST https://api.usergrid.com/your-org/your-app/users/barney/following/users/fred
Note
Please note that this only works when you POST a following
connection. Creating a follower connection would not create a reciprocal
following connection.
This would retrieve a list of the users that Barney is following:
GET https://api.usergrid.com/your-org/your-app/users/barney/following
And this would retrieve a list of users that are following Fred:
GET https://api.usergrid.com/your-org/your-app/users/fred/followers
Creating other connections
You can extend this connection structure to create connections using any
relationship. For example, you could use likes to denote a connection
between a user and his dog with this POST:
POST https://api.usergrid.com/your-org/your-app/users/Fred/likes/dogs/Dino
Note that in this case a reciprocal connection is not automatically
created. To do so you would need to manually create the reciprocal
connection with another POST such as:
POST https://api.usergrid.com/your-org/your-app/dogs/Dino/liked_by/users/Fred
For more information on using entity connections, see Connecting
entities.
Social Graph Connections¶
One of the most useful features of Usergrid is the ability to create connections between entities, which allow you to model arbitrary relationships between entities. This feature is particularly powerful when applied to user entities by allowing you to model complex social graphs between users as well as groups of users.
Following/followers¶
To make the social graph possibilities of entity connections even easier to achieve, Usergrid also has special support for a default following/followers relationship, which offers these additional features:
Reciprocal connection: If a following connection is made between a user and another user, a reciprocal followers relationship will be created automatically. In contrast, all of other entity connections are one-way, meaning any reciprocal relationship must be created manually.
Activity feed subscription: The followed user’s activities will automatically be posted to the following user’s activity feed. For example, if Arthur is following Ford, then any activities published by Ford that Arthur is allowed to see will appear in Arthur’s activity feed.
Creating a following/followers connection¶
To create a following/followers connection between two entities, create the connection as you would any generic entity connection. For full details on creating connections, see Connecting entities.
For example, the following request would create a following/followers relationship between two user entities with the usernames ‘Fred’ and ‘Barney’:
Note
Please note that this only works when you
POSTafollowingconnection. Creating a follower connection would not create a reciprocal following connection.This would retrieve a list of the users that Barney is following:
And this would retrieve a list of users that are following Fred: