How to update Google Sheets file with API PHP Client

Question

I've been taking a look at the Google API PHP Client and would like to use it to add rows to a Google Sheet. From the code, it looks like one would use this method:

  public function insert($fileId, Google_Service_Drive_Property $postBody, $optParams = array())
  {
    $params = array('fileId' => $fileId, 'postBody' => $postBody);
    $params = array_merge($params, $optParams);
    return $this->call('insert', array($params), "Google_Service_Drive_Property");
  }

but I can't really tell what the parameters would be. Am I heading in the right direction? Also, not quite sure on how to connect to a specific Sheet. Please advise.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I figured out how to work this and wanted to share with you guys. As I stated in a comment, I did not think using Zend's GData class was a good way for me since it's very dependent on other classes throughout the framework, thus being too heavy.

So I ended up using this Spreadsheet Client on top of Google's API. Google's API is used to authenticate my service, then I start calling the Spreadsheet Client library afterwards.

After spending over a day of Googling for various problems I had for the authentication process, here's what I did to make things work:

• Created a new project for Google API here
• Clicked "APIs" menu on the left side under "APIs & Auth"
• Searched the Drive API and enabled it (can't remember if it was necessary)
• Clicked the "Credentials" menu on the left
• Clicked "Create new Client ID" button under OAuth
• Selected "Service Account"
• After info showed & json downloaded (not needed), I clicked "Generate new P12 Key" button
• I saved the p12 file somewhere I could access it through PHP

Then in the code, I added the following lines:

$email = '[email protected]';
$CLIENT_ID = $email;
$SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME = $email;
$KEY_FILE = 'path/to/p12/file';
$SPREADSHEETS_SCOPE = 'https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds';

$key = file_get_contents($KEY_FILE);
$auth = new Google_Auth_AssertionCredentials(
    $SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME,
    array($SPREADSHEETS_SCOPE),
    $key
);

$client = new Google_Client();
$client->setScopes(array($SPREADSHEETS_SCOPE));
$client->setAssertionCredentials($auth);
$client->getAuth()->refreshTokenWithAssertion();
$client->setClientId($CLIENT_ID);
$accessToken = $client->getAccessToken();

Also, I had to make sure I:

• Shared my spreadsheet specifically with the email address on my service account in the code above
• Synced my server's time (I'm running Vagrant CentOS so it's slightly different)

I believe you can run this code with other services beyond Spreadsheets, such as Youtube, Analytics, etc., but you will need to get the correct scope link (see $SPREADSHEETS_SCOPE above). Remember, this is only when using the Service Account on the Google Console, which means you are programmatically getting data from your code. If you are looking to have others users sign in using the API, then it's different.

Answer 2

Use Google sheets class from zend framework 1.12. They have very nicely coded library for Google Spreadsheets

https://github.com/zendframework/zf1/tree/master/library/Zend/Gdata/Spreadsheets