How to build a client to Google wave

Question

By looking at current Google wave APIs, I can't find a way to create an alternative client. It's not a robot or gadget, and the embed API is very slim.

Nevertheless, I do see some clients out there - such as Waver and Waveboard.

How do they do it ? is it based on XMPP ?

Answer 1

Note that Waver and Waveboard aren't actual clients, rather single-application web-browsers wrapped around the official https://wave.google.com/wave/ URL.

The Wave Federation protocol comes with a Protocol Buffers based experimental client/server protocol. Some people are using that to make a client, but it's not yet interoperable with the existing wave infrastructure unless you set up your own server (it won't work with @googlewave.com users, you must set up your own wave federation server and have it communicate to that).

During Google I/O they announced the Google Wave Data API which allows a program to read and write to wave on behalf of a user using OAuth. I'm using it to create a true mobile client, but at the current state, it's still very limited and restricted to the actions of fetchWave, search and folderAction (markAsRead/Unread, mute and archive).

http://code.google.com/apis/wave/extensions/wavedataapi/index.html

Lars Rasmussen did mention the beginning of a public client/server protocol, but I can't yet find anything about it.