What this book covers

Chapter 1, Cloning Internet Applications gives a brief description of the purpose of the book, the target readers of the book, and a list of the four popular Internet applications we will be cloning in the subsequent chapters. The bulk of this chapter gives a brief run-down on the various technologies we will be using to build those clones.

Chapter 2, URL Shorteners – Cloning TinyURL explains about the first popular Internet application that we investigate and clone in the book, which is TinyURL. This chapter describes how to create a TinyURL clone, its basic principles, and algorithms used.

Chapter 3, Microblogs – Cloning Twitter. The clone in this chapter emulates one of the hottest and most popular Internet web applications now—Twitter. It describes the basic principles of a microblogging application and explains how to recreate a feature-complete Twitter clone.

Chapter 4, Photo -sharing – Cloning Flickr. Flickr is one of the most popular and enduring photo-sharing applications on the Internet. This chapter describes how the reader can re-create a feature complete photo-sharing application the simplest way possible, following the interface and style in Flickr.

Chapter 5, Social Networking Services – Cloning Facebook 1. The final two chapters describe the various aspects of Internet social networking services, focusing on one of the most popular out there now—Facebook. These two chapters also describe the minimal features of a social networking service and show the reader how to implement these features in a complete step-by-step guide. The first part is described in this chapter, which sets the groundwork for the clone and proceeds to describe the data model used in the clone.

Chapter 6, Social Networking Services – Cloning Facebook 2. The final chapter is part two in describing how to create a Facebook clone. This chapter follows on the previous chapter and describes the application flow of the Facebook clone we started earlier.