I'm working on a lead management web application and need some suggestions on supporting 3rd party "widget" or "plug-in" support. One example might be a widget that uses the Mail Chimp API to build up a recipient list in Mail Chimp based on the leads in my application. Another example might be a 3rd party plug-in that allows the leads to be exported in some proprietary format.
In the long run, I'd like my application to have a "plug-in explorer". I may require that plug-in providers register with me first before being added to the site.
My application will have a nice webservices API to allow the plugins access to my application's data.
Here are some solutions I've been mulling over:
Using an iframe - I could use an iframe to pull in remote pages from a 3rd party site. I could pass in some sort of account identifier (maybe the API key?) to the iframe via the URL parameters. The benefits of this is that it would be very easy to implement. iframes are a bit clunky though.
Allowing jQuery based web widgets (http://alexmarandon.com/articles/web_widget_jquery/) to be inserted into the page. I'd have to control what widgets would be allowed and available to use, otherwise it could pose a big security risk.
Anyone have any experience with this type of thing?
Thanks! - Bret
