How to call a mirror api service from gdk with unique user identification

Question

In mirror api glassware we identify users by the unique user id generated and sent to the glassware by Google-oauth... But my glassware contains a gdk counterpart which needs to send information to the mirror api service. My question is that how do we send such information (e.g. an url request to the glassware mirror-api service) automatically in the background, without using "google notification by sharing with a specific contact", so that we can uniquely identify the user from mirror api glassware side as well as extract the information for the rest of the purpose.

Is there any glass Id that I can send along with the request from gdk and on the mirror-api side get the user's google account from this glass Id and using some other api generate the user Id from the google account just like google-oauth. Once we have the user Id, we can send static timeline cards to that user using simple mirror-api.

Please guide me with whatever solutions available other than "notification subscription".

Answer 1

I've already asked a question like this here: How to call the Mirror API from GDK?

It's seeming like the answer right now is that we can't communicate between the two APIs and everything in Mirror is separate from GDK. I've been doing some digging, trying to get things like the device's contact list since the Mirror documentation refers to your app adding a Contact but it seems like it doesn't use the same Content Providers as Android for this.

From the other thread, my best two ideas for binding a GDK app to a User is to:

1) Generate a QR code on your web service side and scan that in, it will have an encoded authentication token the app will be able to use to identify the user. Obviously this requires integration with the ZXing library and working with the camera.

2) Generate or allow the user to enter a phrase on the web service side that can be treated as a bearer token. In the GDK, prompt the user to speak this phrase and then pass it to your web service, which will reply with a similar authentication token to tie the app to the user. As odd as this is, I do kindof like it since it's simpler from a GDK implementation side.

Answer 2

An application that uses the Mirror API is more likely than not some type of a web service. Why can you not invoke HTTP commands from Glass to your application being hosted on a server? The Mirror API is a set of REST commands invoked to a Google Server. That same google server then syncs to Glass where Glass will pull the updated content with HTTP requests.

Simply put, create a path in your web app that accepts HTTP commands.