I'm currently creating a tool to help me create google analytics daily reports easily. To do this, I need to access google analytics data at specific hours and days (for example, each day at 9am and 9pm), server side (PHP, Laravel).
The problem is that when I use the OAuth 2 authentication method, I need to re-login each time I want to access data (i need to redirect the user, and wait for redirection to get the code, and use it to get a token). I can use the "service account" method, but it implies to use a .p12 certificate, which is not sustainable in production (i can't ask my users to upload their certificates files).
Do you know a way, or have you an idea, to access analytics data without having to relogging (ideally with oauth...) or using service account method (with a certificate file) ?
Thank you
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I need to extract Google Analytics data through it's API. However I do not want to generate any account and key manually (the reason is I do not want to let this technical this to be performed by any non-techie person) and want to dump that data for analysis purpose.
In order to use any of Googles APIs they need to know who you are. You as a developer are identified by the project you create on Google Developer console. Once the project is created you can create a number of different types of credentials including Service account credentials and Oauth2 Credentials.
Answer: No there is no way to programmaticlly create service account credentials. Nor is it possible to use the a Google api without first creating a project on Google developer console.
Note: Google Cloud Resource Manager does exist but is very limited in what it allows you to do.
If someone else is going to be running your application to access their Google analytics Data you should idealy be using Oauth2 in your application and not a service account.
Service accounts are designed as way for the developer to grant others access to data owned by the developer in question. They are not really intended for novice users to be creating their own projects on google developer console and generating credentials.
You are basically asking if you can obtain the credentials necessary to query the API via the API. This does not work.
I am also not sure how this would help you. Before you can do any API operations to a Google Analytics account you need to have an authorized user (e.g. a service account) added to your view or property. If you are in a situation where you can add a user programmatically to an account you might as well just read the data you need.
I am looking to make a web based app which creates a monthly report that has Google Analytics information in i.e. organic searches etc. Some clients will have their own Google Analytics accounts and wont be own mine.
I managed to get the OAuth 2 authorization working with my account however it wont work for clients as I needed to get the client_secret.json file from Google Developers website. I have seen a service like cyfe.com which just gets the google login information and outs the Google Analytics information in graphs and such.
Does anyone know how they manage this is possible without getting the client_secret.json file ?
oAuth2 is designed to let you access to users data with their permission, without requiring to access their password.
You should use your own client Id and client secret, these identify your application, not your users ("client" here means client of the API).
You then need to create an interface where users can allow your application to access to their data, from this you'll get an access token, allowing to your application to access to Google Analytics data of your user on their behalf.
Read "Using OAuth 2.0 to Access Google APIs", and identify the scenario that matches to what you want to achieve.
I strongly suggest that you use a library managing the authentication flow, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Here's a list from Google: Google API Client Libraries.
I would like to enable (some) of my users to view my website's analytics data.
Our website has a bunch of groups where users can add content. I would like to enable certain users (group admins), to view usage statistics for that specific group. Ofcourse the data should only be accessable to those users with the VIEW_ANALYTICS right, not to any others.
Is there any way to do this in Google Analytics, or is there some other platform I could use to easily achieve this goal (we use AWS for our hosting)?
Regards,
klmdb
The Google Embed API allows you to display analytics data in your own pages. Pages that are only accessible to the members of your VIEW_ANALYTICS group.
You can create a service account and give it the appropriate access in the analytics user management for the property.
You also authorize the service account to use the embed API in the developers API console. (I don't have enough points to include more than two links in an answer.) In the API console you can generate a private key (p12 or json format) which you then use on your server to authenticate the request for analytics data.
You don't say which technologies you are using, but they show Java and Python examples of how to set up the authentication by the Service Account. I've also seen some node.js and php libraries.
This way you don't have to manage who has access through the google anayltics admin system, you just need to control who has access to your "dashboard" page.
I have done this all with client-side javascript and it works. Of course the client-side nature means that anybody who knows how to use browser debug tools can get our private-key, but in our particular case I'm not worried about it. On the other had it seem like you need to keep some security around this so I wouldn't recommend the client-side solution.
How can i use gapi.analytics.auth.authorize without button..
I need it for customers, to track visits on their subdomain, and I have my analytics code on page, so they can't use button to authorize, need without it, automatically.
Any example?
Your question isn't very clear it is hard to understand what you mean by Button.
I think you mean that you would like to select data from YOUR Google Analytics account and display it on YOUR website.
To do this you will need to use a service account as apposed to Oauth2 (Oauth2 would popup with a new window requesting access). When you create the service account in the Google developer console take the service account email address. Give it access at the ACCOUNT level in the Google analytics admin section. It must be the account level this will then give the service account access to read your Google analytics data.
Quota: I am not sure what you are extending to do here but remember you can only make 10000 requests per day against your Google Analytics profile. After that you are cut off there is no way to extend this number. So I advice you to save the data in the database someplace you shouldn't request the same data more then once.
Example:
I suggest that you look for an example in what ever programing language you are intending to use. Again your question doesn't state anything about what language you will be using. Hello analytics API might be a good place to start but it depends upon the language the PHP one is way out of date I wouldn't bother with it. Also you cant use a service account with JavaScript so that one is out to.
Update figured out button
Embded api I think I have finally figured out what you mean by button. gapi.analytics.auth.authorize is used in the Google analytics embedded api. Which is JavaScript which it is not possible to use with a Service account. So the final answer to your question is
Answer: You cant remove the button from the Google Analytics Embded api the only way to login with JavaScript is to use Oauth2.
Advice: switch to PHP and use a service account to request data yourself. Or give each of your customers access to your Google analytics so they can login themselves.
I have successfully written a tool to display upcoming calendar events on a website using Google's calendar API (v2). I am using the username/password method outlined at https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/v2/developers_guide_dotnet#AuthClientLogin. Today an instance of this code would not return data or a decent error message. I finally logged into the web server and browsed directly to http://calendar.google.com and logged in using the credentials. I was challenged by Google's captcha and then my code worked.
How do I get around API calls being blocked by Google's captcha security? I don't want to have to re-code for magic cookies but I will if I have to. I have read some about generating tokens but I dont know if that is something I have to do once or every time the code is called.
If your app is a service that is getting used by many people, you might be running into API call bandwidth limitation. That is, google is limiting the number of API requests per time interval.
If this IS getting used by many people, you may have to upgrade to a paid account.