Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on Wed 22 Apr 2009

Apple - Used by creative and design conscious people as it has a much easier on the eye interface.
Microsoft - Used by companies as it gives administrative users control over the network with a much more manageable overhead.

Never the two shall meet….until today that is.  Having to use undocumented calls was bad enough; having to use undocumented calls from a Microsoft.Net platform to a python/bsd Apple platform was even worse!  There was no way for us to code as you would by referring to an SDK instead we had to code by exception.  Using a code, compile, exception, re-code cycle which took us far longer than we wanted, or anticipated.  Thankfully by using the http://www.xml-rpc.net/ XmlRPC assemblies we were able to get it working.  I have to admit, this was actually a lot of fun despite it making me want to tear what little hair I have out.

The result?

A web part which allows a user to view authenticated RSS feeds from an Apple Podcast Producer server within Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 without ever having to navigate away from the site.

Rather than make the users have to enter the RSS feeds which they have access to manually, we decided to make it automatic, all the users need to do is provide their “Mac Open directory” credentials for the web part to authenticate with and the rest is done for you!

Whats more, as you probably dont have a mac server published on the wide open internet, the webpart also introduces a proxy function which will fetch content without having to publish the podcast producer computer to all and sundry.