I got tired of visiting the AdSense page all the time, well from time to time. I already have done an iPhone app so now I created a iGoogle gadget to display the most important stats and also a chart!
So, with the help of Mono I was able to have everything setup and tested in under 3 days. The real interesting part here is the fact that Google APIs timeout any json request after about 10 seconds, not always enough to complete the login process and get the reports on behalf of the user. So, I had to do some threading and implement several locking techniques to make sure no duplicate work gets done in between requests. Luckily, Mono behaved quite well after that last little problem I blogged about – Mono Strange Behaviour (Bug!). I also had to implement several security checks and encryption to make sure no data can be stolen and that it gets purged from the site after 10 days or the user logs out. Now I’m really curious to see how the code will hold if/when more users start to use the gadget. Oh, and one more thing, it work on Google Wave too!
If you want to try it you can add it to iGoogle, a Google Wave (you can search for “with:public New AdSense iGoogle and Google Wave gadget!” for a public wave I posted). The URL of the gadget is: http://iadsense.alexandre-gomes.com/igoogle/Gadget.aspx
Or, you can try it here:
Tags: AdSense, gadget, Google, Mono