Earlier this week, Google launched its Google Drive Realtime API to allow developers to utilize Google Drive's real-time collaboration features in their own applications.
According to Google, this API is meant to offer collaborative versions of popular data objects, like maps, strings, lists and JSON values, as well as automatically synchronizing and storing any modifications to these objects. Developers can even add their own custom objects and references.
Plus, since the API will track the presence of collaborators, the developers can alert users when other people join and leave, as well as when they make changes to a document.
As with Drive, the Realtime API will enact any local changes that take place when a user is in the developer's application, and these will be immediately reflected in the local document via the use of operational transformation. In other words, local apps will continue to be responsive, even if they're running on high-latency networks.
In addition, Google has opened up the Drive Realtime API Playground, so that developers can go in and test out their applications. To use the Drive Realtime API and gain access to the Playground, users must first sign up for the original Google Drive API.
