This is an attempt to recreate the behaviour of the Mirror API (based on the official documentation) to allow developers like me who can't be part of the Glass Explorer program, to test potential applications that could be feasible using Glass.
And even if the real Mirror API turns out to be completely different from what I envision it to be you can use this as a learning place for different Google technologies:
-
Google Cloud Endpoints, with JavaScript and Python clients
-
Google+ Sign-in, client-side flow (Glass emulator)
-
Google+ Sign-in, server-side flow (Web app)
-
Google App Engine for Web applications in general
-
Channel API for push notifications to the browser-based emulator
-
And how they all can work together
See this document for a detailed description of what this does and how it works.
mirror_api_server
is meant to be hosted on Google App Engine and includes several parts.
mirror_api
is an implementation of the Mirror API using Google Cloud Endpoints.
static/glass
contains a browser based emulator for Glass.
(can be accessed at yourapp.appspot.com/glass/
)
service.py
is a simple playground implementation for a Web Application that makes use of
the Mirror API.
auth.py
handles all authentication and storing of credentials when a user signs up
for the demo services. Sets up contacts and subscriptions when the user
first connects. Also handles disconnection by removing all contacts and
subscriptions and deleting credentials when the user wants to disconnect.
notify.py
handles subscription post requests coming from the Mirror API and forwards
the requests to the relevant demo services.
demos/*.py
are demo services that react to incoming notifications.
-
Clone (or fork and clone) this repository
git clone https://github.com/Scarygami/mirror-api.git cd mirror-api
-
Fetch the endpoints_proto_datastore repository:
git submodule init git submodule update
-
Create symlink
mirror_api_server/endpoints_proto_datastore
toendpoints-proto-datastore/endpoints_proto_datastore
Linux/Unix-based systems:
cd mirror_api_server ln -s ../endpoints-proto-datastore/endpoints_proto_datastore/ endpoints_proto_datastore
Windows systems: (run cmd as Administrator)
cd mirror_api_server mklink /D endpoints_proto_datastore ..\endpoints-proto-datastore\endpoints_proto_datastore\
In case you can't get the symlink to work correctly (meaning the API won't work correctly after deploying because of the missing endpoints_proto_datastore library) you can alternatively copy the folder
endpoints-proto-datastore/endpoints_proto_datastore/
over tomirror_api_server
manually so that you get this folder structure:mirror_api_server/ - endpoints_proto_datastore/ - ndb/
You will need to repeat this copy step whenever there are changes in the endpoints_proto_datastore library.
Download the latest zip file from https://www.googledrive.com/host/0B1pwzJXH7GP8Z3VRcnVudERPQ2M/ and extract it. This includes all dependencies, but won't always be the newest available version.
-
Create a new App Engine application at https://appengine.google.com/ The name of the application will be referred to as
yourapp
for the following steps. -
Create a new project in the Google APIs Console
-
Activate the Google+ API in
Services
-
Create a new Client ID for web applications in
API Access
-
Leave Redirect URIs empty but set Javascript origin to
https://yourapp.appspot.com
andhttp://localhost:8080
for local testing. -
Edit
mirror_api_server/client_secrets.json
and changeYOUR_CLIENT_ID
andYOUR_CLIENT_SECRET
to the information from the APIs Console.Important: Don't commit that file if you contribute to this project. One possible solution to prevent this: http://blog.bossylobster.com/2011/10/protecting.html
-
Edit
mirror_api_server/app.yaml
to change the name of the application toyourapp
. -
Follow the steps in the Google App Engine Python 2.7 Getting Started to install the necessary dependencies and deploy the application. Specifically you will need the steps The Development Environment and Uploading Your Application
At the moment the only functionality of the web app hosted at
https://yourapp.appspot.com/
is to send text and image cards
to the Glass emulator available at https://yourapp.appspot.com/glass/
but I'm planning to add more functionality to it. Using the login on
the web app also sets up the necessary contacts and subscriptions
for the demo services and stores credentials for offline access of the services.
You can also use the API Explorer at https://yourapp.appspot.com/_ah/api/explorer
to directly send requests to the API.
You will have to turn on OAuth (in the upper right corner of the Explorer) with
the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email
scope.
You can already use the Explorer to register ShareEntities and Subscriptions.
The Glass emulator will display actions and shares correctly and send them to
the Mirror API Server which forwards the information to the relevant subscriptions.
For simplification (and because it's easier to implement like this for Cloud endpoints) this assumes that there is only one application (i.e. one Client ID) that uses the Mirror API, so you will have access to all timeline cards of a user, whereas in the real Mirror API you would only have access to cards created by or shared with your application.
The real Mirror API supports Multipart-bodies to attach images to cards.
Since this isn't possible using Google Cloud Endpoints
(they only support application/json
as request/response bodies),
I went for a different solution with filling the contentUrl in attachments directly
with any URL, which also works with Data-URIs if the image isn't available online.
Not all features of the Mirror API are implemented yet. Location data is missing and not all available fields for timeline cards are used yet.
I'm not part of the Glass Explorer program so there are no guarantees that the final Mirror API will work anything like I suppose it will in this demo implementation. The information is collected from the various public bits and pieces that have been published. Also see my document about the topic.
Copyright (c) 2013 Gerwin Sturm, FoldedSoft e.U. / www.foldedsoft.at
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not
use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of
the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT
WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under
the License