· 2 min read
The only differences between external_apps and internal_features in a plugin architecture
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From A User’s Perspective
First Party Default Apps are just product features.
First Party Installable Apps are apps that can be installed by the user.
- These apps are not enabled by default
- These are provided by default.
- A user won’t even know that these are treated as an app by the platform company.
Third-party apps are created by third-party developers and can extend the core functionality of the first-party app.
- These apps are not enabled by default.
Code Perspective
These two types of apps are the same, except the first-party app doesn’t need Authentication to access Platform data, while the third-party app does.
A third-party app may utilize all capabilities that the plugin platform provides unless some capabilities are reserved for first-party apps.
In the previous post, I explained how we could define scopes for our resource would work.
I took the example of movies where an app is using 2 scopes: ”read:movies” and ”read:userinfo”
Let’s call this app, an external_app.
Now suppose we have an internal feature, which uses the same endpoints that “read:movies” and “read:userinfo” uses.
The only difference between external_app and the internal feature would be that the external_app will use OAuth and scopes to get access to the resource. While the internal_feature would not have to ask for permission to access the resource.
This means, once you create a scope, it’s fixed.
And this simplifies your development a lot.
So, therefore, we need not treat internal features and external apps very differently.
At the platform level, both internal_feature and the external_app are just apps.