Using Google Data APIs with django apps

07 Jun 2014

####Setting up a Google Project In order to use any of the Google APIs for your application, first you need to set up a project in the Google Developer’s Console. Enable all the APIs that you want to use in the APIs tab under APIs and auth. Under the Credentials tab, create a Client ID and Client secret which is used for communication between your application and the API. Enter all the allowed redirect urls in the Redirect URIs field. These are the URLs to which the application redirects after a user is successfully authenticated. You can change these URLs any time you want. Now your Google App is ready for use.

We wanted to create a small application where users can invite their google contacts to join HackerEarth.

####Dependencies We use the GData python client library, which makes it easy to interact with these Google services. You can install it using pip:

sudo pip install gdata or install it from [source](https://code.google.com/p/gdata-python-client/downloads/list).

####Authentication First we need to define some constants that we will use througout the application

#Obtained from Google Project Settings 
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID = <Your Client ID>
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET = <Your Client Secret>

#Variable that specifies the data you want to access
GOOGLE_SCOPE = "http(s)://www.google.com/m8/feeds/"

#URL where the flow should go on successful authentication
GOOGLE_APPLICATION_REDIRECT_URI = <Some URL>

GOOGLE_REDIRECT_SESSION_VAR = <some arbitary value>

Since we wanted to use the Contacts API we used the above mentioned scope. A list of other scopes is given here.

The first step for authentication is generation of an authentication token. Since we have written a separate view to handle the auth token after successful login, we are setting the authentication token in the session so that the same token can be accessed in both the views.

#Try to fetch the authentication token from the session
auth_token = request.session.get('google_auth_token')

#If an authentication token does not exist already,
create one and store it in the session.
if not auth_token:
    auth_token = gdata.gauth.OAuth2Token(
            client_id=GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID,
            client_secret=GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET, 
            scope=GOOGLE_SCOPE, 
            user_agent=USER_AGENT)
    request.session['google_auth_token'] = auth_token

####The login view After successful authentication google returns a code which can be used to generate an access token which acts as a confirmation of the authentication. Here again we will set the authentication token on the session and redirect to the same view where we came from.

def google_login(request):
    
    #Fetch the auth_token that we set in our base view
    auth_token = request.session.get('google_auth_token')
    
    #The code that google sends in case of a successful authentication
    code = request.GET.get('code')
    
    if code and auth_token:
        #Set the redirect url on the token
        auth_token.redirect_uri = GOOGLE_APPLICATION_REDIRECT_URI
        
        #Generate the access token
        auth_token.get_access_token(code)
        
        request.session['google_auth_token'] = auth_token
        
        #Populate a session variable indicating successful authentication
        request.session[GOOGLE_COOKIE_CONSENT] = code
        
        #Redirect to your base page
        return redirect(request.session.get(GOOGLE_REDIRECT_SESSION_VAR))
    
    #If user has not authenticated the app   
    return redirect('wherever you want to')

####Making API calls Now that our authentication token has an access token we can make the API calls to fetch the data.

if request.session.get(GOOGLE_C00KIE_CONSENT):
    
    #Create a data client, in this case for the Contacts API
    gd_client = gdata.contacts.client.ContactsClient()
    
    #Authorize it with your authentication token
    auth_token.authorize(gd_client)

    #Get the data feed
    feed = gd_client.GetContacts()

else:
    
    #Since we want to get redirected back to the same page
    request.session[GOOGLE_REDIRECT_SESSION_VAR] = request.path
    
    #Generate the url on which authentication request will be sent
    authorize_url = auth_token.generate_authorize_url(
            redirect_uri=GOOGLE_APPLICATION_REDIRECT_URI)
    
    return redirect(authorize_url)

The flow will remain same for other APIs. The only things that will change are:

  1. The scope URL
  2. The GData client

P.S. I am a developer at HackerEarth. Reach out to me at virendra@hackerearth.com for any suggestion, bugs or even if you just want to chat! Follow me @virendra2334

Posted by Virendra Jain


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