Question

I’ve got credentials of an account with access to Google Analytics,

I’m looking to utilise the Analytics Core Reporting API http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/home.html

I’ve found examples which use username/password calling setUserCredentials, but have seen comments this is less secure/has a low request limit (And doesn’t exist in the lastest client).

Plus I’ve seem examples which use oauth, but require user interaction and grant access to the users google account.

However I’m looking to run a service which doesn’t require any user interaction, and connects to a predefined google account (un-related to the user viewing it).

I can then store the results in a database, and end users can query the results from the database.

I’ve seen information about using AccessType = Offline when you first login, which then returns an access token and a refreshtoken.
http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/OAuth2WebServer.html#offline

In my example though, the end user will never login to the application.
Could I have a seperate admin application which gets a refresh token, and stores the refresh token in the config/lookup table?
Then the main application can use the refresh token pulling from the config/lookup table, and get an access token to be able to query the Google Analytics account.

I’m looking for a C# example which uses AccessType = Offline, and seperates out the fetching of the refresh token and using the refresh token to get an access token to query the google analytics account.

Answer 1

Create your app https://code.google.com/apis/console/

For you App, turn on access to Google Analytics, and create an OAuth 2.0 client ID for your website.

Browse to:

https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?response_type=code&client_id=YOUR_APP_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com&access_type=offline&scope=https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.readonly&redirect_uri=HTTP://YOUR_CALL_BACK_URL

Having changed YOUR_APP_ID, YOUR_CALL_BACK_URL to the relevant values.

Important to include access_type=offline.

Press Grant Access, this will redirect to HTTP://YOUR_CALL_BACK_URL?code=THIS_IS_YOUR_CODE. Copy the code in the URL.

With the code, request the Refresh Token using CMD prompt.

curl -d "code=THIS_IS_YOUR_CODE&client_id=YOUR_APP_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com&client_secret=YOUR_APPS_SECRET_CODE&redirect_uri=HTTP://YOUR_CALL_BACK_URL&grant_type=authorization_code" https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token

Having changed THIS_IS_YOUR_CODE, YOUR_APP_ID, YOUR_APPS_SECRET_CODE, YOUR_CALL_BACK_URL to the relevant values.

Record the refresh_token returned.

Download the latest version of the Core Reporting V3.0 .net libraries
http://code.google.com/p/google-api-dotnet-client/wiki/Downloads

There is a bug in the current version of Google.Apis.Analytics.v3.cs, to fix this copy the code in this file to your local solution (And don’t reference Google.Apis.Analytics.v3.bin)
http://code.google.com/p/google-api-dotnet-client/source/browse/Services/Google.Apis.Analytics.v3.cs?repo=samples&name=20111123-1.1.4344-beta

And change the property Dimensions from a List<system.string> to a string.

Or you’ll get an error like me and this guy did http://www.evolutiadesign.co.uk/blog/using-the-google-analytics-api-with-c-shar/

You can then use your Refresh Token, to generate you an Access Token without user interaction, and use the Access Token to run a report against Google Analytics.

using System;
using DotNetOpenAuth.OAuth2;
using Google.Apis.Authentication.OAuth2;
using AnalyticsService = Google.Apis.Analytics.v3.AnalyticsService;

class Program
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            var client = new WebServerClient(GoogleAuthenticationServer.Description, "YOUR_APP_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com", "YOUR_APPS_SECRET_CODE");
            var auth = new OAuth2Authenticator<WebServerClient>(client, Authenticate);
            var asv = new AnalyticsService(auth);
            var request = asv.Report.Get("2012-02-20", "2012-01-01", "ga:visitors", "ga:YOUR_GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ACCOUNT_ID");
            request.Dimensions = "ga:pagePath";
            request.Sort = "-ga:visitors";
            request.MaxResults = 5;
            var report =  request.Fetch();
            Console.ReadLine();
        }

        private static IAuthorizationState Authenticate(WebServerClient client)
        {
            IAuthorizationState state = new AuthorizationState(new string[]{}) { RefreshToken = "REFRESH_TOKEN" };

            client.RefreshToken(state);
            return state;
        }
    }