Sometime you need to exchange transient data between platforms, but they don’t talk to each other very well. For example you could be launching a webapp with some data generated from Excel, but you want to get feedback data back into Excel again. You could use a database, or push/pull solutions, but it can be complex to set up, and the authentication is often difficult to get right.
NOTE –
Ephemeral exchange was migrated to a Firestore/ Firebase cloud function back end and deprecated in 2019. These pages are retained for historical interest.
- Migrating from App Engine to Cloud Functions
What is Ephemeral Exchange
It’s a JSON API to exchange ephemeral data that doesn’t need each platform to authenticate, but relies on using keys that are known by each collaboration party, and issued by the API. Apps knowing the item id, and appropriately authorized access keys can use them to retrieve data written by an entirely different platform (even using a web browser)
Demo
and here’s another showing how to use streetview and generate slides with selected views.
Demo of the JSON editor
See Slides on Ephemeral Architecture here