Drew Burden

What if I told you…

• I was sick of the fact MySpace didn’t have any interfaces so you could syndicate data elsewhere?
• I took matters into my own hands… again?

First I whipped up MySpaceDP, a tool to always return a user’s default picture, which has steadily evolved into the monster hit it is today, and now I have a brand new tool to facilitate using MySpace data externally.

It’s called XMLTopFriends, and it puts information about your Top Friends into a convenient XML file for use in other projects. It’s actually the first building block of a total MySpace syndication project I will debut on my Friends page on DrewBurden.com hopefully sometime this year. It integrates well with MySpaceDP, and it’s in a state where you can already write your own wrappers in PHP or by using AJAX.

Try it out! Open http://apps.drewburden.com/xmltopfriends/nedrubwerd.xml in a new browser window. It should show you the XML data, and if it asks you to save the file, do it and open the file in Notepad. There it has all my Top Friends in an easy-to-manipulate format.

There’s only one catch with this tool: it doesn’t work if your profile is private. Since it actually visits your profile and picks out the 4, 8, 12, and so on friends you have in your top, if your profile is private, it can’t see your Top Friends! In that case, the program just thinks you have no Top Friends. I found a way around private profiles with MySpaceDP, but a workaround just isn’t possible with this tool. Sorry.

If you know your MySpace URL name or FriendID and want to play with this tool, just replace the “nedrubwerd” in the address above to match your MySpace URL name or FriendID. I’ll write a summary page and place it on the site soon, but right now I have to work.