Good news, Google Data APIs are upgrading and moving to the official Google Code blog! From now on, we'll be posting all of our new and exciting news at http://googlecode.blogspot.com.
Unfortunately, that means there won't be any more posts here. However, if you need information from any of the older posts, they will all remain here indefinitely.
And of course, you can always find loads of information about all of Google's developer products at http://code.google.com/.
Data APIs Blog
http://googlecode.blogspot.com/
Friday, December 11, 2009 at 10:36 AM
Import Scans or Go Multilingual
Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 5:32 PM
About a month ago, we launched v3.0 of the Documents List Data API and promised more features were on the way. Well today, we're releasing two experimental features in the API: OCR and Document Translation.
The first, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), allows your application to create editable Google Documents from high-resolution images containing text (such as faxes or scanned letters). To perform OCR on a .png, .jpg, or .gif upload, add the ocr=true parameter onto your upload request:
POST /feeds/default/private/full?ocr=true HTTP/1.1
OCR will only work well on high-resolution images. The quality of the extracted text isn't perfect yet, but we're busy improving it!
Secondly, we have integrated Google Translate into the API. As a result, you can translate a document during upload. Simply add the targetLanguage and sourceLanguage parameters to your upload request:
POST /feeds/default/private/full/?targetLanguage=de&sourceLanguage=en HTTP/1.1
If sourceLanguage is omitted, we'll try to auto detect the document's language. All languages supported by Google Translate (full list here) are supported in the API.
As always, see the documentation for details. There's also a live demo (source will be available soon) up at googlecodesamples.com.
New Data API for Google Sites!
Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 2:13 AM
We're very excited to announce a brand new Data API for Google Sites!
If you're new to the application, Google Sites is a powerful collaborative content creation tool that can be used to centralize file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it's just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish sites to the world.
Now, all of your Google Sites content can be accessed using the Google Data protocol. That means porting over an old webpage or backing up an existing site got much easier! In fact, check out our open-source Google Sites import/export tool that does just that.
So what can you do with the Google Sites API? Glad you asked! The API supports most of the functionality found in Google Sites, which includes the ability to:
- Retrieve, create, modify, and delete pages and content.
- Upload/download attachments.
- Review the revision history across a site.
- Display recent user activity.
Visit us in our new developer forum if you have questions!
PDFs, Revisions, Folder Sharing in the DocList API
Friday, August 28, 2009 at 3:50 PM
You filed features...we listened!
Today, we're pleased to announce Version 3.0 of the Documents List Data API, which includes PDF upload/download (the most requested feature on our issue tracker). V3 also introduces a slew of new features, such as folder sharing, domain and group level ACLs, document revision history, and feed URIs that are more user friendly and RESTful. For example:
Fetch ACLs: GET /feeds/default/private/full/<resource_id>/acl
Fetch revision history: GET /feeds/default/private/full/<resource_id>/revisions
Fetch folder contents: GET /feeds/default/private/full/<folder_resource_id>/contents
We've also made improvements to the API's latency and stability -- a major request by users over the past several months. We're hoping this latest version will allow developers to create even better and more interesting integrations with "The Cloud".
For the full list of features and deprecations, check out the documentation and API release notes. If you're a Java developer, there's an updated Java Developer's Guide and sample app . A new version of the Objective-C library is also available. Look for updates to the other client libraries and developer guides in the coming weeks. If you have questions, please visit us in our new developer forum.
New Contacts Data API features are here!
Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 8:25 AM
A new version of the Contacts Data API has been made available. V3.0 of the API brings greatly expanded data schema, including support for structured name and postal address.
We have vastly extended the data schema for contacts to allow faithful synchronization of Google Contacts with other widely used contact databases, like Microsoft Outlook or Apple's Address Book. Besides the support for structured name and postal address, another highlight is the inclusion of the oft-requested birthday field.
We hope the new version of the Contacts Data API will allow developers to easily create more sophisticated and universally compatible contacts-enabled applications. For any questions about the new features, please visit the Google Contacts groups page.
OAuth Playground: Open-sourced
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 2:48 PM
The OAuth Playground has proven to be an invaluable tool for developers. For one, it's handy for experimenting with the Google Data APIs, but more importantly, it gives developers the ability to debug their own OAuth implementations. Anyone who tinkered with the open protocol knows it has nuances! Many first-timers fall into the same pitfalls, so to help remedy that, I've decided to open-source the Playground in hopes that other OAuth service providers will create similar tools for their own APIs.
A lot has happened in the OAuth space since the Playground's release last fall. Included in that is Google's growing number of OAuth-related features and resources to aid developers. Here are just a few:
- 2 legged OAuth for Google Apps administrators
- Hybrid (OpenID + OAuth) protocol
- Client library OAuth samples in Python, App Engine Python, Java, App Engine Java, PHP
- Article: Using OAuth with the Google Data APIs
- Article: Using OAuth in the Google Data API Client Libraries
The feedback we have heard is that OAuth is difficult to implement and that it's tough to grasp the interactions between user, consumer and service provider. By open-sourcing the OAuth Playground, we really want to make it easier for developers to understand the OAuth flow and debug their own OAuth applications.
For even more information on OAuth and the OAuth proxy, check out our talk at Google I/O entitled Using Google Data APIs and OAuth to Create an OpenSocial Gadget.
If you have any questions, ask in the forums!
Google Analytics Data Export API has Launched!
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 10:08 AM
We are very excited to announce a new member to the Google Data API family, Google Analytics! For those of you who don't know, Analytics is a powerful web analysis tool that provides incredible amounts of data about where visitors come from, what they do while on your site and where they go from there. The best part is that it's free for everyone!
The new Google Analytics Data Export API is now publicly available to all Analytics users as a Labs API that provides an easy to use way to get read-only access to your Analytics data. All report data that is available to you through the web interface will also be available through this new Google Data API. In addition to the standard Google Data API protocol of making requests over HTTP and accessing your data in XML, we will also be providing both a Java and JavaScript client library to make it even easier to integrate with your Analytics information.
With the availability of this API, you all now have a standardized way to integrate your Google Analytics Data with your own business data to extend existing products or create new standalone applications. Want to see custom views of your Analytics data? Create your own dashboards and gadgets that pull from the Analytics API. Want features that aren't included in the web interface? Build them yourself instead of waiting for them to be developed. Take a look at this Android application from Actual Metrics or this desktop application from Desktop-Reporting to see examples of what some developers have already done.
To dive in and begin writing your own apps, make sure you go to the Analytics API section of the Google Code website to find all of the necessary documentation. For key announcements, code changes and updates, sign up for the Google Analytics API Notify e-mail group which we promise will only send out e-mails when there is something that directly affects developers. Lastly, to share ideas and and get feedback from other developers, join the Google Analytics API Group.
For more details on Google Analytics and the new API, check out the Analytics blog. For more information about building gadgets with the JavaScript library and other topics related to the Google Data APIs, make sure to check out the website for our developer conference, Google I/O, which will be taking place from May 27-28th in San Francisco.
[Updated on 05/22/2009] We are happy to also announce that we added the Google Analytics API to the Objective-C client library. Check out the library here and if you have any questions, please read the new post on the Objective-C group page.
