Google Contacts API's and scope?

Question

Currently i'm trying to retrieve all of a users contact information as well as retrieve their unique User ID.

Our app needs to utilise a users google contacts and the user will sign in using google. Thus we require some way of identifying each unique user (most likely a unique user id provided by google)

Is this possible only using the google contacts API.

The initial call I make to retrieve an access token is:

"https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?client_id=51672309258-94cnvnrkrverd72neakom9d3siscda5o.apps.googleusercontent.com&redirect_uri=http://localhost/lunch/oauth.php&scope=https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/&response_type=code"

However I do not believe the access token returned from this call has any information for user ID and, also, does not provide the permissions to retrieve User ID from the Google+ Api.

Is there anyway that one can obtain a unique user ID from the google contacts API? There are examples of obtaining a user id of the users contacts but I need to obtain the actual users ID (i.e. the user whose contacts I am obtaining)?

Does this require another scope or can this also be accomplished by using the contacts API?

kaiseroskilo kaiseroskilo · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-25T11:44:03

You can identify a user by his/her email address, which is unique AFAIK. When you issue requests to google contacts api you get a field in the xml which is called Id, that is the user's email address.

For example you could ask for all contacts and you would get an xml like this .The Id field is what you want, and depending on the programming language, lib , etc you are using you can get it with your existing permissions. For example in C# and gdata you would do something like this(googleCredentials is supposed to be your object):

        var cr = new ContactsRequest(settings);
        var feed = cr.GetGroups();
        googleCredentials.Email = feed.AtomFeed.Id.Uri.Content;

Google Contacts API's and scope?

2 Answers