tag:www.majordojo.com,2010://3/tag:www.majordojo.com,2009://3.14991- Comments for Media Manager works with Amazon. Again. A blog about Movable Type, technology, geek-dom, science-fiction and yes, sometimes my personal life. Movable Type 4.261 tag:www.majordojo.com,2009://3.14991 2009-12-08T19:37:15Z 2009-12-08T20:18:55Z Media Manager works with Amazon. Again. Not too long ago Amazon made some important changes to its API to improve security, but this change had the unfortunate result of breaking Media Manager. My knee-jerk reaction was to just go into my code and implement the API... Byrne http://www.majordojo.com/ Not too long ago Amazon made some important changes to its API to improve security, but this change had the unfortunate result of breaking Media Manager. My knee-jerk reaction was to just go into my code and implement the API change directly in my custom built Amazon API library -- because hey, it would fix the problem and allow me to go about my day. But working on Melody has been a reminder to me about how important it is to drop proprietary code in favor of third party libraries when they emerge. It is not always the easy thing to do, because it often requires a huge effort to rewire your code to a new library, but in most cases it is the right thing to do because in the long run it will:

  • Consolidate development around a library that more people will benefit from.
  • Bring more features to your users faster.
  • Allow you to leverage documentation written and maintained by someone else.
  • Increase the size of your support community.

And that is what I did with Media Manager. I dropped all of my old proprietary Amazon API code in favor of a widely used, well supported CPAN module called Net::Amazon. In the process I dramatically simplified my code base, I incorporated more features that have emerged from Amazon's API since I initially wrote Media Manager, and made the framework easier to extend and use. All in all, it is proving to be a great change for the plugin that brings more features and capabilities to Media Manager users.

However, this change may also mean changes for its users. For a lot of Media Manager users, this new version may mean that your template code will no longer work. This change which breaks backwards compability was unfortunate, but to a great extent unavoidable, especially if I wanted to maximize the end-user benefits for shifting to Net::Amazon. So if you are an existing user of Media Manager and are anxious to restore interoperability with Amazon, then please consult Media Manager's new documentation with its many template code samples to see what changes you might need to update your blog's templates.

You can download Media Manager 2.1 from github, and file support tickets and bug reports in lighthouse. Please, if you have problems, let me know so that I fix them as soon as possible.

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