Google's officially supported node.js client library for using Google APIs. It also supports authorization and authentication with OAuth 2.0.
This library is in Alpha. We will make an effort to support the library, but we reserve the right to make incompatible changes when necessary.
If you've used this library before 1.0
, see our Migration Guide
to learn about migrating your code from 0.x.x
to 1.0
. It's pretty easy :)
- Ask your development related questions on
- If you've found an bug/issue, please file it on GitHub.
If you're working with Google Cloud Platform APIs such as
Datastore, Cloud Storage or Pub/Sub, consider using gcloud
, a
Node idiomatic client for Google Cloud services.
This library is distributed on npm
. In order to add it as a dependency,
run the following command:
$ npm install googleapis --save
Example: Creates a URL Shortener client and retrieves the long url of the given short url:
var google = require('googleapis');
var urlshortener = google.urlshortener('v1');
var params = { shortUrl: 'http://goo.gl/xKbRu3' };
// get the long url of a shortened url
urlshortener.url.get(params, function (err, response) {
console.log('Long url is', response.longUrl);
});
To interact with the various Google APIs you need to create a service client for that particular API. These are immutable objects you use to make API calls.
Example: Creating a urlshortener
client with version v1
of the API.
var google = require('googleapis');
var urlshortener = google.urlshortener('v1');
Supported APIs are listed on the Google APIs Explorer.
This client comes with an OAuth2 client that allows you to retrieve an access token and refreshes the token and retry the request seamlessly if token is expired. The basics of Google's OAuth2 implementation is explained on Google Authorization and Authentication documentation.
In the following examples, you may need a CLIENT_ID
, CLIENT_SECRET
and
REDIRECT_URL
. You can find these pieces of information by going to the
Developer Console, clicking your project --> APIs & auth --> credentials.
For more information about OAuth2 and how it works, see here.
A complete sample application that authorizes and authenticates with the OAuth2
client is available at examples/oauth2.js
.
To ask for permissions from a user to retrieve an access token, you redirect them to a consent page. To create a consent page URL:
var google = require('googleapis');
var OAuth2 = google.auth.OAuth2;
var oauth2Client = new OAuth2(CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET, REDIRECT_URL);
// generate a url that asks permissions for Google+ and Google Calendar scopes
var scopes = [
'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.me',
'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar'
];
var url = oauth2Client.generateAuthUrl({
access_type: 'offline', // 'online' (default) or 'offline' (gets refresh_token)
scope: scopes // If you only need one scope you can pass it as string
});
Once a user has given permissions on the consent page, Google will redirect the page to the redirect URL you have provided with a code query parameter.
GET /oauthcallback?code={authorizationCode}
With the code returned, you can ask for an access token as shown below:
oauth2Client.getToken(code, function(err, tokens) {
// Now tokens contains an access_token and an optional refresh_token. Save them.
if(!err) {
oauth2Client.setCredentials(tokens);
}
});
You can set the auth
as a global or service-level option so you don't need to
specify it every request.
Example: Setting a global auth
option.
var google = require('googleapis');
var OAuth2 = google.auth.OAuth2;
var oauth2Client = new OAuth2(CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET, REDIRECT_URL);
google.options({ auth: oauth2Client }); // set auth as a global default
Example: Setting a service-level auth
option.
var google = require('googleapis');
var OAuth2 = google.auth.OAuth2;
var oauth2Client = new OAuth2(CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET, REDIRECT_URL);
var drive = google.drive({ version: 'v2', auth: oauth2Client });
See the Options section for more information.
You can start using OAuth2 to authorize and authenticate your
requests to Google APIs with the retrieved tokens. If you provide a
refresh_token
and the access_token
has expired, the access_token
will be
automatically refreshed and the request is replayed.
Following sample retrieves Google+ profile of the authenticated user.
var google = require('googleapis');
var plus = google.plus('v1');
var oauth2Client = new OAuth2(CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET, REDIRECT_URL);
// Retrieve tokens via token exchange explained above or set them:
oauth2Client.setCredentials({
access_token: 'ACCESS TOKEN HERE',
refresh_token: 'REFRESH TOKEN HERE'
});
plus.people.get({ userId: 'me', auth: oauth2Client }, function(err, response) {
// handle err and response
});
If you need to manually refresh the access_token
associated with your OAuth2
client, make sure you have a refresh_token
set in your credentials first and
then call:
oauth2Client.refreshAccessToken(function(err, tokens) {
// your access_token is now refreshed and stored in oauth2Client
// store these new tokens in a safe place (e.g. database)
});
You may need to send an API key with the request you are going to make. The following uses an API key to make a request to the Google+ API service to retrieve a person's profile given a userId:
var google = require('googleapis');
var plus = google.plus('v1');
var API_KEY = 'ABC123'; // specify your API key here
plus.people.get({ auth: API_KEY, userId: '+google' }, function(err, user) {
console.log('Result: ' + (err ? err.message : user.displayName));
});
Alternatively, you can specify the key
parameter and it will get used:
plus.people.get({ key: API_KEY, userId: '+google' }, function(err, user) {
console.log('Result: ' + (err ? err.message : user.displayName));
});
To learn more about API keys, please see the documentation.
This client supports multipart media uploads. The resource parameters are
specified in the resource
parameter object, and the media itself is
specified in the media.body
parameter with mime-type specified in media.mimeType
.
Example: Upload a plain text file to Google Drive with the title "Test" and contents "Hello World".
var drive = google.drive({ version: 'v2', auth: oauth2Client });
drive.files.insert({
resource: {
title: 'Test',
mimeType: 'text/plain'
},
media: {
mimeType: 'text/plain',
body: 'Hello World'
}
}, callback);
You can also upload media by specifying media.body
as a Readable stream.
This can allow you to upload very large files that cannot fit into memory.
Note: Your readable stream may be unstable. Use at your own risk.
Example: Upload an image to Google Drive from a readable stream.
var fs = require('fs');
var drive = google.drive({ version: 'v2', auth: oauth2Client });
drive.files.insert({
resource: {
title: 'testimage.png',
mimeType: 'image/png'
},
media: {
mimeType: 'image/png',
body: fs.createReadStream('awesome.png') // read streams are awesome!
}
}, callback);
For more examples of creation and modification requests with media attachments,
take a look at the examples/mediaupload.js
sample.
Every request to the API returns a request
object, allowing you to track
the request's progress or general information about the request.
var req = drive.files.insert(/* ... */);
console.log(req.uri.href); // print out the request's URL.
For more fine-tuned control over how your API calls are made,
we provide you with the ability to specify additional options that can
be applied directly to the mikeal/request
object used in
this library to make network calls to the API.
You may specify additional options either in the global google
object or on a
service client basis.
The options you specify are attached to the request
object so whatever
request
supports, this library supports. You may also specify global or per-service request parameters that will be attached to all API calls you make.
A full list of supported options can be found here.
var google = require('googleapis');
google.options({ proxy: 'http://proxy.example.com', auth: auth });
// All requests made with this object will use these settings unless overridden.
var google = require('googleapis');
google.options({ params: { quotaUser: 'user123@example.com' } });
// All requests from all services will contain the above query parameter
// unless overriden either in a service client or in individual API calls.
You can also specify options when creating a service client.
var auth = 'API KEY'; // or you could use oauth2Client
var urlshortener = google.urlshortener({ version: 'v1', auth: auth });
// All requests made with this object will use the specified auth.
By doing this, every API call made with this service client will use 'API KEY'
to authenticate.
Note: Created clients are immutable so you must create a new one if you want to specify different options.
var urlshortener = google.urlshortener({
version: 'v1',
params: { quotaUser: 'user123@example.com' }
});
// All requests made with this service client will contain the
// quotaUser query parameter unless overriden in individual API calls.
// Calls with this drive client will NOT contain the quotaUser query parameter.
var drive = google.drive('v2');
You can specify an auth
object to be used per request. Each request also
inherits the options specified at the service level and global level.
This library is licensed under Apache 2.0. Full license text is available in COPYING.
See CONTRIBUTING.