MXit API unveiled…

Yesterday I attended the release of the MXit API for external applications and games. What can I say, as usual for a MXit event, my high expectations were met. Hosted at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, the lucky attendees were welcomed with good food and drinks, a gift pack of MXit branded stuff and one of the all new MXit Gear (MXit clothing range) items on their seats.

MXit Gear Caps

The past, present and future…

After two very interesting and informative presentations on the past, current and future of MXit and the now open platform API from Herman Heunis and Sayed Mohamed it was time for lunch. The lunch could have easily been more spectacular than the MXit API release itself.

After lunch, Gustav Mauer (the head of MXit development) gave the final presentation which was paticularly exciting for the more technical attendees as he explained a high level overview of the architecture and strucure behind the complex systems at MXit and the way you will connect through the API.

I think most interesting of all, he went on to demonstrate attaching a new MXit application (even over a terrible wifi connection) to the MXit system in a few lines of code, which was more than impressive as everyone could follow the demo live as changes were applied in a few seconds. Creating a simple numeric guessing game, and a short hello world example were among the few things seen.

How to start using the MXit SDK…

The demonstrated SDK can be obtained from code.mxit.com where you just sign up for a new account and start using the SDK, that though mature is still considered in a beta release. After creating an account you will get a application username and password… from this a service name to add and test your application live on MXit.

code.mxit.com

There’s a forum and definitely going to be a massive influx of documentation as time goes on through code.mxit.com. But I will have a series of posts on how to create your own game and applications for MXit.

What you’ll need…

You will need Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or later which can be obtained for free as an Express Edition.

The MXit SDK utilizes WCF to communicate with the MXit system, this comes with your Microsoft .Net development kit.

Hosting… this was stressed heavily, but this is definitely something to take into account. Once live and gaining users, your application is likely to sky rocket in user base and activity and due to the nature of the network operator connectivity you will experience waves of requests at times that can funnily enough seem like DOS attacks – they’re not ;)