XING Cartridge - Configuration Guidelines

The Sponger cartridge for the XING professional networking platform is written to the XING REST API. The cartridge makes it easy to extract your XING profile data and convert it to Linked Data.

OAuth Pre-requisites

The cartridge uses OAuth to obtain access to your XING profile. You give the Sponger access by granting an access token, allowing the Sponger to act as an OAuth client. On the client side, the access token granting process is handled by the Virtuoso Authentication Layer (VAL) which must be installed in order to use the XING cartridge. Details of how to install and configure VAL can be found on our Sponger OAuth Support page.

Registering the Sponger as a XING Application

To access the XING API, you require a XING developer account through which you can obtain an OAuth consumer key and secret. The XING Core concept page outlines how to access the API. After registering as a XING developer, follow the My Apps link on their Developer home page, then click on "+ Create app" to register the Sponger as a XING application and obtain a key/secret pair. The name of the Sponger application can be anything you choose. Be aware that if using a XING test key, rather than a production key, the data returned from the XING API may include some dummy data.

Registering the XING Application Key in Virtuoso

Register the application key and secret in Virtuoso by creating an entry in the "Login Authentication Keys" panel under Conductor's "Linked Data" > "OAuth Service Binding" tabs, setting the service name to "Xing".

Granting an Access Token

First, ensure the XING cartridge is enabled by checking the checkbox in the leftmost column adjacent to the XING entry in the extractor cartridges list under the "Linked Data" > "Sponger" > "Extractor Cartridges" tabs. Next, visit the /sponger page of your Virtuoso instance and click on the XING icon. You should be prompted to login to XING, if not already, and then asked if you wish to grant the Sponger (identified by the application name you used when registering the application) access to your profile. After granting access you should be returned to a Virtuoso confirmation page displaying sample Sponger links. At this point VAL will have saved your XING access token and you are ready to sponge your XING profile data.