The new Soundcloud widget is very welcome where the user inserts a Soundcloud URL and a playable widget is automatically added to the post.
However it's not appearing in activities.list or activities.get in the Google+ API. Neither in the object.content nor as an object.attachment.
Typical YouTube Share in the API:
{
"actor": {...}
"object": {
"content": "Watch this!",
"attachments": [
{
"objectType": "video",
"url": "http://www.youtube.com/...",
"image": {...},
"embed": { "url": "..." }
}
]
}
}
Typical SoundCloud share in the API:
{
"actor": {...}
"object": {
"content": "Listen to this!"
}
}
There's an open feature request for that behaviour, since it also affects all other "special" attachments, like Google Play or Google Drive links https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=407
While the "embed" isn't all that important, I would at least expect a URL to be added as attachment to link to the shared content, the way it is displayed in the mobile app.
+Scott McMullan +Thor Mitchell
object:
title: //legacy //140 chars
content: //legacy
content_summary: //1000 chars or so plus readmore
content_html: //full html representation with dummy CSS tags waiting to be redefined
Of course, If this was implemented, it would then be trivial to produce an Atom output of the activities.list API as an alternative to the JSON output. But that's another story! In the mean time, those of us creating RSS/Atom output of public posts are reading the JSON and then recreating the HTML representation. Which then looks like an ongoing process as new attachment types are created and new additions made to the API.
Maybe I'm suggesting constructs that aren't quite right, but the main point is that Atom solved a lot of these problems some time ago. IMHO, Google ought to use and build on that work in creating something that combines the best of activity.streams and Atom while moving it on.
I can put up with having only JSON and no (Atom) XML representation, but it's annoying having to specifically code to recreate data that is already there.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/google-plus-developers/j8kVc9K7FGw/YtdMata0q9EJ
Well there's still not much call for it! /s Just one or two requests from high profile people each month[1] and a steady stream of developers producing G+ posts -> Atom[2] for Google and then often giving up under the volume strain.
eg [1] https://plus.google.com/+MikeElgan/posts/JiQrLqYULvx
[2] http://pluss.aiiane.com