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Creating a Google Data Gadget October 2008

A walk-through for creating a gadget using the Blogger Data API. Gadget developers can now take advantage of the OAuth Proxy, which hides much of OAuth's authentication details and does the heavy lifting for you. The Proxy signs data requests on behalf of your gadget, so there's no need to manage private keys or worry about signing requests...

Using OAuth with the Google Data APIs September 2008

Recently, all of the Google Data APIs adopted support for OAuth, an open protocol that aims to standardize the way desktop and web applications access a user's private data. OAuth provides a means of performing secure API authentication in a standard and secure fashion. As programmers, we're taught to reuse code wherever possible. OAuth will help developers reduce the amount of duplicate code they write and make it easier to create tools that work with multiple services from a variety of different providers...

Using the YouTube Data API with App Engine and the Python Client Library August 2008

This tutorial, based on a Google I/O codelab, demonstrates how to use the YouTube Data API in conjunction with App Engine and the Python Client Library. It covers everything from basic feed retrieval, to search and to video uploads.

CalVis: Creating a customized AJAX UI for your Google Calendar June 2008

Have you ever wanted to create a customized calendar experience on your website using Google Calendar data but not quite sure how to present the calendar data visually? There seems to be a good number of developers who share this dilemma. While the Google Calendar Data API is a powerful web service API as it allows you tap into the richness of all your Google Calendar data, it remains a pure read/write data API with no provision for data visualization...

Coding in the Shade: Using Eclipse with Google Data APIs April 2008

Eclipse is a very handy (and free!) IDE that has a special place in the hearts of many Java programmers. It is not a surprise then, that you might want to use it with the Java client library to make a killer Java application that works with one of the Google Data APIs...

Using Ruby with the Google Data APIs April 2008

Ruby is a dynamic scripting language that has received a good amount of attention in recent years due to the popular Rails web-development framework. This article will explain how to use Ruby to interact with Google Data API services. We will not focus on Rails, instead we are more interested in explaining the underlying HTTP commands and structure of our feeds. All of the examples presented here can be followed from the command line by using irb, Ruby's interactive shell...

YouTube Data API for ActionScript 3.0 : First Steps March 2008

In this tutorial I will show you how, with under 10 lines of actual AS3 code, you can retrieve the most popular videos on YouTube for the last day, week, month or all_time...

.NET Documents List Uploader Sample January 2008

One of the nice things about the Documents List Data API is that it allows developers to make migration tools for users who are still getting settled into Google Docs. For the purposes of exercising this API, I have used the .NET Client Library to create a .NET 2.0 uploader application, appropriately titled the "DocList Uploader"...

REST for the Traveling Salesman: Using Google Data on Salesforce.com November 2007

Salesforce.com and Google host popular "Software as a Service" applications and both organizations provide APIs that allow developers to access the large stores of data that power these applications-and things start to get interesting when we combine both sets of APIs. Google Apps continue to be used more and more in the enterprise setting and Salesforce.com has built an extensive platform for building custom business applications, so there are many opportunities for developers (that's you!) to combine the power of Google and Salesforce.com...

Using cURL to interact with Google data services September 2007

At heart, Google Data APIs use Atom feeds and entries (XML) as a data format and HTTP as a protocol for data transmission - extending the Atom Publishing Protocol. cURL is a command-line application for performing requests using a variety of protocols including HTTP. cURL is often used by developers to test Google data services, as it supports the HTTP functionality required to interact with the APIs at a low level...

Using AuthSub with the .NET Client Library August 2007

A tutorial highlighting how to use AuthSub for web apps authentication in the .NET client library. Web applications that need to access services protected by a user's Google or Google Apps (hosted) account can do so using the Authentication Proxy service. To maintain a high level of security, the proxy interface, called AuthSub, enables the web application to get access without ever handling their users' account login information...

General Interest

Radish - Indoor Solar-powered Calendar Display May 2008

You have probably heard of "20% projects" for Google engineers, which allows them to spend 20% of their time working on innovative projects of their choice. One of these projects is not only slick and creative but also environmentally responsible. Google engineer Aaron Spangler, from the Google Seattle office, often thought about how to reduce the paper consumption in Google offices...

Getting Started with the Google Data Client Libraries

Getting Started with the Google Data PHP Client Library October 2008

The Google Data PHP Client Library is a powerful collection of classes that allow you to interact with the Google Data APIs. Unlike our other client libraries, it is packaged as part of the popular Zend Framework but can also be downloaded separately. Similar to our other client libraries it is also open-source and designed to be simple and efficient, allowing you to get started on your projects quickly ...

Getting Started with the Google Data Java Client Library September 2007

It's never easy to start developing with an unfamiliar API, so this article has step-by-step instructions on how to download and install the Google Data Java Client Library. I'll go through getting all of the dependencies and setting the environment variables you'll need...

Getting Started with the Google Data Python Library August 2007

So you've decided to use the Google Data Python client library to write an application using one of the many Google data services. Excellent choice! My aim with this short tutorial is to quickly get you started in using the client library to develop your application...

Getting Started with the .NET Client Library August 2007

In this article, I have pulled together some step-by-step instructions for how to begin with the .NET client library using either Visual Studio 2005 for Windows or Mono for Linux and other Unix operating systems. It is my hope that this will save you some time in getting started and let you quickly start working with some code...

Creating Mashups

Creating a User-Contributed Map with PHP and Google Spreadsheets November 2007

At the end of this article, you'll have a system where users can register, login, and add geotagged places. The system will use AJAX for the front-end, PHP for server-side scripting, and Google Spreadsheets for storage. If you're accustomed to using MySQL databases for storage, you could easily modify the code here to use a MySQL database backend instead...

Google Mashup Editor and Yahoo! Pipes: Friend, not Foe July 2007

Our Mashing it up with Google Mashup Editor tutorial showed how to plot Google Calendar meeting locations on an interactive map by invoking the Google Maps API from a Google Mashup Editor (GME) application. When the user selects an entry from the list of calendar events, that GME application invokes a small JavaScript function to convert the calendar feed's textual location to longitude and latitude via the Google Map API's GClientGeocoder.getLatLng() method. This time we examine an alternative solution that eliminates the need for JavaScript altogether...

Mashing It Up With Google Mashup Editor June 2007

This tutorial teaches you how to build a simple mashup using the Google Data API, the Google Mashup Editor (GME), and the Google Maps API. It requires a very basic understanding of HTML and JavaScript but not much more. You can consult the Google Mashup Editor Getting Started Guide for a quick introduction into the GME development environment...

Publishing Events - Mashing up Google Spreadsheets, Calendar and Base June 2007

Event Publisher is a quickly developed, proof-of-concept application that maintains a list of events in Spreadsheets and publishes them to both Calendar and Google Base. Google Calendar provides a great way to share events and give people an easy way to include the events in their own calendar view. While Calendar does provide the ability to search for events, Google Base provides yet another venue for publicizing events and excels at storing structured data in a way that's easy to search...

Using Google Base and Google Gears for a Performant, Offline Experience June 2007

Combining Google Base with Google Gears, we demonstrate how to create an application that can be used offline. After reading through this article, you will be more familiar with the Google Base API, as well as understand how to use Google Gears for storing and accessing user preferences and data...

Debugging Tips

On the Wire: Network Capture Tools for API Developers June 2007

This article introduces several tools that can help make the data on the wire more visible and useful. Commonly called "packet sniffers," these tools capture all network packets that move across your network interface. Examining the contents of these packets and the order in which they were sent and received can be a useful debugging technique...

Living Vicariously: Using Proxy Servers with the Google data API Client Libraries June 2007

This article is discusses setting up and working with HTTP proxy servers using the Google Data client libraries.

Debugging Google data API Clients: Exploring Traffic from Within your Program June 2007

For this article, I've written sample diagnostic code in 3 languages using the Google data API client libraries for Java, .NET, and Python. In each example, I turn on logging or debugging, authenticate using client login, and then get a list of my Google Spreadsheets and print out their titles...