March 2014 Summaries

Firebase’s REST API now supports real-time streaming through the EventSource/Server-Sent Events protocol, enabling notifications on platforms not supported by Firebase client libraries. To stream changes from a Firebase location, clients must request the `text/event-stream` format, follow HTTP 307 redirects to the appropriate server, and supply an authentication credential when reading protected data. The server delivers JSON payloads through named events including `put`, `patch`, `keep-alive`, `cancel`, and `auth_revoked`, allowing applications to maintain a synchronized local cache. Ruby and Python command-line chat examples demonstrate an architecture with separate threads for listening to streamed events, posting messages, and managing the user interface, and developers are invited to explore the GitHub examples and provide feedback or contributions.

Firebase announced updated EmberFire bindings that integrate directly with Ember Data, enabling Ember applications to define asynchronous hasMany and belongsTo model relationships backed by Firebase. The release, accompanied by the FireBlog real-time blogging example, makes EmberFire dependent on Ember Data, while developers not using Ember Data are directed to the separate ember-firebase library and the older EmberFire version remains available on GitHub. Setup involves including Ember, Ember Data, Firebase, and EmberFire or installing through Bower, then configuring a DS.FirebaseAdapter with a Firebase URL. The FireBlog example demonstrates denormalized Firebase data organized into posts, comments, and users, with Ember Data models, routes that fetch records through findAll and find, and automatic real-time updates to the Ember data store and interface. The team invited feedback and contributions as it continued improving the Ember Data integration.