How to get user email after OAUTH with Google API Python Client

Question

I'm currently building a web app interacting with Google API in Python. Using the oauth to get access to the users resources. After successful authentication and upgrade of the token like this:

gd_client = gdata.photos.service.PhotosService()
gd_client.SetAuthSubToken(token)
gd_client.UpgradeToSessionToken()

Then I can access the different feeds of the API and get a list of the users Youtube videos for example. But the user has only logged in with Google and all I have is a oauth token and no other info on the user. How do I retrieve info on the user? Like email, display name and so on? I have been testing a lot of different stuff without managing to solve this...

I found some interesting here: Is there a way to get your email address after authenticating with Gmail using Oauth?

My theory was that I could use the PhotoService.GetAuthSubToken() and then reuse that token to request the contact and get auther.email from the contact entry. Changed the scope of the auth to:

scope = ['https://picasaweb.google.com/data/', 'https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/']

witch returns a roken valid for both services... Any ideas?

Solution 1

So I found a great way to do it!

Request the extra scope of https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email then I can access that with a Gdata.Client to get the e-mail address.

Complete example code: https://code.google.com/p/google-api-oauth-demo/

Complete write up of how I got there: http://www.hackviking.com/2013/10/python-get-user-info-after-oauth/

Solution 2

I just want to add a resource I found to be particularly easier to use. Here it is: link. Kallsbo directed me to a correct location by searching for scope https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email. After you already have credentials, simply use the following function taken directly from that link:

    def get_user_info(credentials):
  """Send a request to the UserInfo API to retrieve the user's information.

  Args:
    credentials: oauth2client.client.OAuth2Credentials instance to authorize the
                 request.
  Returns:
    User information as a dict.
  """
  user_info_service = build(
      serviceName='oauth2', version='v2',
      http=credentials.authorize(httplib2.Http()))
  user_info = None
  try:
    user_info = user_info_service.userinfo().get().execute()
  except errors.HttpError, e:
    logging.error('An error occurred: %s', e)
  if user_info and user_info.get('id'):
    return user_info
  else:
    raise NoUserIdException()

Call it user_email = get_user_info(credentials)['email'], and you already have your email there! :)

Comments

[marty331]

Kristofer,I've been looking for this for days! thanks so much for posting the blog!!

[Kristofer Källsbo]

marty331: Happy to share it, it took me a while and a lot of reading, testing and pepsi before I cracked it!

[swdev]

Man you just save my day! Thanks!

[MoorzTech]

YES! Thanks alot! This is the way to do it with the official google-api library.