Tag Archives: http

Google Cloud for Student Developers: Accessing G Suite REST APIs

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Cloud

Recently, we introduced the "Google Cloud for Student Developers" video series to encourage students majoring in STEM fields to gain development experience using industry APIs (application programming interfaces) for career readiness. That first episode provided an overview of the G Suite developer landscape while this episode dives deeper, introducing G Suite's HTTP-based RESTful APIs, starting with Google Drive.

The first code sample has a corresponding codelab (a self-paced, hands-on tutorial) where you can build a simple Python script that displays the first 100 files or folders in your Google Drive. The codelab helps student (and professional) developers...

  1. Realize it is something that they can accomplish
  2. Learn how to create this solution without many lines of code
  3. See what’s possible with Google Cloud APIs

While everyone is familiar with using Google Drive and its web interface, many more doors are opened when you can code Google Drive. Check this blog post and video for a more comprehensive code walkthrough as well as access the code at its open source repository. What may surprise readers is that the entire app can be boiled down to just these 3-4 lines of code (everything else is either boilerplate or security):

    DRIVE = discovery.build('drive', 'v3', http=creds.authorize(Http()))
files = DRIVE.files().list().execute().get('files', [])
for f in files:
print(f['name'], f['mimeType'])

Once an "API service endpoint" to Google Drive is successfully created, calling the list() method in Drive's files() collection is all that's needed. By default, files().list() returns the first 100 files/folders—you can set the pageSize parameter for a different amount returned.

The video provides additional ideas of what else is possible by showing you examples of using the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides APIs, and those APIs will be accessed in a way similar to what you saw for Drive earlier. You'll also hear about what resources are available for each API, such as documentation, code samples, and links to support pages.

If you wish to further explore coding with G Suite REST APIs, check out some additional videos for the Drive, Sheets, Gmail, Calendar, and Slides APIs. Stay tuned for the next episode which highlights the higher-level Google Apps Script developer platform.

We look forward to seeing what you build with Google Cloud!

Discontinuing support for JSON-RPC and Global HTTP Batch Endpoints

Posted by Dan O’Meara, Program Manager, Google Cloud Platform team

We have invested heavily in our API and service infrastructure to improve performance and security and to add features developers need to build world-class APIs. As we make changes we must address features that are no longer compatible with the latest architecture and business requirements.

The JSON-RPC protocol (http://www.jsonrpc.org/specification) and Global HTTP Batch (Javascript example) are two such features. Our support for these features was based on an architecture using a single shared proxy to receive requests for all APIs. As we move towards a more distributed, high performance architecture where requests go directly to the appropriate API server we can no longer support these global endpoints.

As a result, next year, on January 25, 2019 we will discontinue support for both these features.

We know that these changes have customer impact and have worked to make the transition steps as clear as possible. Please see the guidance below which will help ease the transition.

What do you need to do?

Google API Client Libraries have been regenerated to no longer make requests to the global HTTP batch endpoint. Clients using these libraries must upgrade to the latest version. Clients not using the Google API Client Libraries and/or making custom calls to the JSON-RPC endpoint or HTTP batch endpoint will need to make the changes outlined below.

JSON-RPC

To identify whether you use JSON-RPC, you can check whether you send requests to https://www.googleapis.com/rpc or https://content.googleapis.com/rpc. If you do, you should migrate.

  1. If you are using client libraries (either the Google published libraries or other libraries) that use the JSON-RPC endpoint, switch to client libraries that speak to the API's REST endpoint:
  2. Example code for Javascript

    Before

    // json-rpc request for the list method
    gapi.client.rpcRequest('zoo.animals.list', 'v2',
    name:'giraffe'}).execute(x=>console.log(x))

    After

    // json-rest request for the list method
    gapi.client.zoo.animals.list({name:'giraffe'}).then(x=>console.log(x))

    OR

    1. If you are not using client libraries (i.e. making raw HTTP requests):
      1. Use the REST URLs, and
      2. Change how you form the request and parse the response.

    Example code

    Before

    // Request URL (JSON-RPC)
    POST https://content.googleapis.com/rpc?alt=json&key=xxx
    // Request Body (JSON-RPC)
    [{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0","id":"gapiRpc",
    "Method":"zoo.animals.list",
    "apiVersion":"v2",
    "Params":{"name":"giraffe"}
    }]

    After

    // Request URL (JSON-REST)
    GET https://content.googleapis.com/zoo/v2/animals?name=giraffe&key=xxx

    HTTP batch

    A batch request is homogenous if the inner requests are addressed to the same API, even if addressed to different methods of the same API. It is heterogeneous if the inner requests go to different APIs. Heterogeneous batching will not be supported after the turn down of the Global HTTP batch endpoint. Homogenous batching will still be supported but through API specific batch endpoints.

    1. If you are currently forming heterogeneous batch requests:
      1. Change your client code to send only homogenous batch requests.

    Example code

    The example demonstrates how we can split a heterogeneous batch request for 2 apis (urlshortener and zoo) into 2 homogeneous batch requests.

    Before

    // heterogeneous batch request example.

    // Notice that the outer batch request contains inner API requests
    // for two different APIs.

    // Request to urlshortener API
    request1 = gapi.client.urlshortener.url.get({"shortUrl": "http://goo.gl/fbsS"});

    // Request to zoo API
    request2 = gapi.client.zoo.animals.list();

    // Request to urlshortener API
    request3 = gapi.client.urlshortener.url.get({"shortUrl": "https://goo.gl/XYFuPH"});

    // Request to zoo API
    request4 = gapi.client.zoo.animal.get("name": "giraffe");

    // Creating single heterogeneous batch request object
    heterogeneousBatchRequest = gapi.client.newBatch();
    // adding the 4 batch requests
    heterogeneousBatchRequest.add(request1);
    heterogeneousBatchRequest.add(request2);
    heterogeneousBatchRequest.add(request3);
    heterogeneousBatchRequest.add(request4);
    // print the heterogeneous batch request
    heterogeneousBatchRequest.then(x=>console.log(x));

    After

    // Split heterogeneous batch request into two homogenous batch requests

    // Request to urlshortener API
    request1 = gapi.client.urlshortener.url.get({"shortUrl": "http://goo.gl/fbsS"});

    // Request to zoo API
    request2 = gapi.client.zoo.animals.list();

    // Request to urlshortener API
    request3 = gapi.client.urlshortener.url.get({"shortUrl": "http://goo.gl/fbsS"})

    // Request to zoo API
    request4 = gapi.client.zoo.animals.list();
    // Creating homogenous batch request object for urlshorterner
    homogenousBatchUrlshortener = gapi.client.newBatch();

    // Creating homogenous batch request object for zoo
    homogenousBatchZoo = gapi.client.newBatch();
    // adding the 2 batch requests for urlshorterner
    homogenousBatchUrlshortener.add(request1); homogenousBatchUrlshortener.add(request3);

    // adding the 2 batch requests for zoo
    homogenousBatchZoo.add(request2);
    homogenousBatchZoo.add(request4);
    // print the 2 homogenous batch request
    Promise.all([homogenousBatchUrlshortener,homogenousBatchZoo])
    .then(x=>console.log(x));

    OR

  3. If you are currently forming homogeneous batch requests
    1. And you are using Google API Client Libraries, then simply update to the latest versions.
    2. If you are using non-Google API client libraries or no client library (i.e making raw HTTP requests), then:
      • Change the endpoint from www.googleapis.com/batch to www.googleapis.com/batch//.
      • Or, simply read the value of 'batchPath' from the API's discovery doc and use that value.

For help on migration, consult the API documentation or tag Stack Overflow questions with the 'google-api' tag.