Patent ID: 8397212

Claim:
A module hosting and generation platform comprising at least one computing device, comprising: a module data store operative to store module definition information comprising, for each module, a module identifier and one or more module view definitions, each module view definition is associated with a determined view type of a plurality of view types and defines how module output data is generated for said view type, each view type is indicative of one or more attributes of computer program code that implements a module view definition; a user configuration data store operative to store configuration information in association with a key comprising a module identifier, an instance identifier and a user identifier; and one or more module generators implemented via said at least one computing device, each operative to: receive, from a network application, one or more module requests for module output data, wherein each module request includes a module identifier, an instance identifier, and a user identifier; retrieve, responsive to the module requests, configuration information from the user configuration data store; retrieve a module view definition from the module data store; generate module output data by merging user configuration data with the retrieved module view definition and conditionally performing additional processing operations based on the view type associated with the module; and transmit the module output data to the network application.