We are very excited to announce that our first alpha release of JomSocial REST server is available for testing from the development forum. This early build is of course, still minimal in features and serves only public data at the moment. Future builds with proper authentication system are being developed as we speak.

But, what is a "REST" server? Well, it doesn't actually mean that your server can take a rest and process less data. It is simply a new way to represent your content to the rest of the world. A REST server implementation opens many new possibilites for you to serve your content. For example, developing a widget based on your existing photo gallery would be a lot easier.

You may also allow your data to be streamed from other sites, or even on mobile devices. You may create a native iPhone apps that allow users to interact with your content. Someone might be interested in building a mobile application that allows status update  from a mobile device. Perhaps a desktop application that allow your to manage your photos online better. All of these will be made possible with our REST server implementation.

This new component also uses the new framework which future JomSocial will be build upon. Zend Framework. Wait, don't be alarmed! This isn't the same as Zend Encoder. Our source code will always be open and un-encoded. Zend Framework is a solid, enterprise-class php programming framework, which is also open-source under the new BSD license. You may read about it here http://framework.zend.com/ . This allows us to speed up development and have all sorts of nice features from this framework.

Full information and complete API will be made available at our documentation page, http://www.jomsocial.com/docs/JomSocial_REST_API