The googleads Python client library

Note: DoubleClick for Publishers was recently renamed to Google Ad Manager, and this library was modified to follow suit. Please see the migration guide for more details.

This client library simplifies accessing Google's SOAP Ads APIs - AdWords, and DoubleClick for Publishers. The library provides easy ways to store your authentication and create SOAP web service clients. It also contains example code to help you get started integrating with our APIs.

Getting started

Download and install the library

setuptools is a pre-requisite for installing the googleads library

It is recommended that you install the library and its dependencies from PyPI using pip. This can be accomplished with a single command:

$ pip install googleads

As an alternative, you can download the library as a tarball. To start the installation, navigate to the directory that contains your downloaded unzipped client library and run the "setup.py" script as follows:

$ python setup.py build install
Copy the googleads.yaml file to your home directory.

This will be used to store credentials and other settings that can be loaded to initialize a client.
Set up your OAuth2 credentials

The AdWords and DoubleClick for Publishers APIs use OAuth2 as the authentication mechanism. Follow the appropriate guide below based on your use case.

If you're accessing an API using your own credentials...
- Using AdWords
- Using Ad Manager
If you're accessing an API on behalf of clients...
- Developing a web application (AdWords or Ad Manager)

Where can I find samples?

You can find code examples for the latest versions of AdWords or Ad Manager on the releases page.

Alternatively, you can find AdWords or Ad Manager samples in the examples directory of this repository.

Where can I find the pydocs?

Our pydocs can be found here.

Caching authentication information

It is possible to cache your API authentication information. The library includes a sample file showing how to do this named googleads.yaml. Fill in the fields for the API and features you plan to use. The library's LoadFromStorage methods default to looking for a file with this name in your home directory, but you can pass in a path to any file with the correct yaml contents.

# Use the default location - your home directory:
adwords_client = adwords.AdWordsClient.LoadFromStorage()

# Alternatively, pass in the location of the file:
ad_manager_client = ad_manager.AdManagerClient.LoadFromStorage('C:\My\Directory\googleads.yaml')

How do I change the Client Customer Id at runtime?

You can change the Client Customer Id with the following:

adwords_client = AdWordsClient.LoadFromStorage()
adwords_client.SetClientCustomerId('my_client_customer_id')

Where do I submit bug reports and/or feature requests?

If you have issues directly related to the client library, use the issue tracker.

If you have issues pertaining to a specific API, use the product support forums:

How do I log SOAP interactions?

The library uses Python's built in logging framework. You can specify your configuration via the configuration file; see googleads.yaml for an example.

Alternatively, you can manually specify your logging configuration. For example, if you want to log your SOAP interactions to stdout, and you are using the Zeep soap library, you can do the following:

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format=googleads.util.LOGGER_FORMAT)
logging.getLogger('googleads.soap').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

If you are using suds, you can achieve the same like this:

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format=googleads.util.LOGGER_FORMAT)
logging.getLogger('suds.transport').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

If you wish to log to a file, you'll need to attach a log handler to this source which is configured to write the output to a file.

How do I disable log filters?

The zeep plugin used for logging strips sensitive data from its output. If you would like this data included in logs, you'll need to implement your own simple logging plugin. For example:

class DangerousZeepLogger(zeep.Plugin):
  def ingress(self, envelope, http_headers, operation):
    logging.debug('Incoming response: \n%s', etree.tostring(envelope, pretty_print=True))
    return envelope, http_headers

  def egress(self, envelope, http_headers, operation, binding_options):
    logging.debug('Incoming response: \n%s', etree.tostring(envelope, pretty_print=True))
    return envelope, http_headers

adwords_client.zeep_client.plugins.append(DangerousZeepLogger())

When using suds, this library will apply log filters to the googleads.common, suds.client, and suds.transport loggers in order to omit sensitive data. If you need to see this data in your logs, you can disable the filters with the following:

logging.getLogger('googleads.common').removeFilter(
    googleads.util.GetGoogleAdsCommonFilter())
logging.getLogger('suds.client').removeFilter(
    googleads.util.GetSudsClientFilter())
logging.getLogger('suds.mx.core').removeFilter(
    googleads.util.GetSudsMXCoreFilter())
logging.getLogger('suds.mx.literal').removeFilter(
    googleads.util.GetSudsMXLiteralFilter())
logging.getLogger('suds.transport').removeFilter(
    googleads.util.GetSudsTransportFilter())

I'm familiar with suds/zeep. Can I use those features in the library?

Yes, you can. The services returned by the client.GetService() functions all have a reference to the underlying client stored in the zeep_client or suds_client attributes. You can retrieve the client and use it in familiar ways:

client = AdWordsClient.LoadFromStorage()
campaign_service = client.GetService('CampaignService')
suds_client = campaign_service.suds_client

campaign = suds_client.factory.create('Campaign')
# Set any attributes on the campaign object which you need.
campaign.name = 'My Campaign'
campaign.status = 'PAUSED'

operation = suds_client.factory.create('CampaignOperation')
operation.operator = 'ADD'
operation.operand = campaign

# The service object returned from the client.GetService() call accepts suds
# objects and will set the SOAP and HTTP headers for you.
campaign_service.mutate([operation])

# Alternatively, if you wish to set the headers yourself, you can use the
# suds_client.service directly.
soap_header = suds_client.factory.create('SoapHeader')
soap_header.clientCustomerId = client.client_customer_id
soap_header.developerToken = client.developer_token
soap_header.userAgent = client.user_agent

suds_client.set_options(
    soapheaders=soap_header,
    headers=client.oauth2_client.CreateHttpHeader())

suds_client.service.mutate([operation])

How can I configure or disable caching?

By default, clients are cached because reading and digesting the WSDL can be expensive. However, the default caching method requires permission to access a local file system that may not be available in certain hosting environments such as App Engine.

You can pass an implementation of suds.cache.Cache or zeep.cache.Base to the AdWordsClient or AdManagerClient initializer to modify the default caching behavior.

For example, configuring a different location and duration of the cache file with zeep

doc_cache = zeep.cache.SqliteCache(path=cache_path)
adwords_client = adwords.AdWordsClient(
  developer_token, oauth2_client, user_agent,
  client_customer_id=client_customer_id, cache=doc_cache)

And with suds:

doc_cache = suds.cache.DocumentCache(location=cache_path, days=2)
adwords_client = adwords.AdWordsClient(
  developer_token, oauth2_client, user_agent,
  client_customer_id=client_customer_id, cache=doc_cache)

You can also disable caching in similar fashion with zeep

adwords_client = adwords.AdWordsClient(
  developer_token, oauth2_client, user_agent,
  client_customer_id=client_customer_id,
  cache=googleads.common.ZeepServiceProxy.NO_CACHE)