I managed to authenticate with Google using the ClientLogin method and I got back an auth token that seems to be working fine. The login part is done and I can verify that the token is valid.
Now I’m stuck on the next step. I want to use this authentication token to fetch all my documents from Google Docs but I’m not sure how to proceed. What API calls do I need to make? Should I be using specific headers with the token?
Has anyone worked with Google Docs API before and can point me in the right direction? I just need to download the documents programmatically once I have the valid auth token.
hey! just make a GET request to the docs API endpoint with your auth token in the Authorization header. use Authorization: GoogleLogin auth=YOUR_TOKEN and hit https://docs.google.com/feeds/default/private/full to grab all docs. worked for me when i did this.
Once you get the auth token working, you’ll need to handle XML responses since the older Docs API returns XML data. Here’s what I learned implementing this: always include the GData-Version header - use GData-Version: 3.0 for consistent behavior. You can filter document types by adding parameters like ?category=document or ?category=spreadsheet to the feed URL if you only want specific types. Use the auth token exactly as you received it from the login response - don’t modify it. Make sure your HTTP client handles redirects automatically since Google sometimes returns 302 responses.
ClientLogin is deprecated, but since you’ve got it working, here’s what you need to do. After you get your auth token, send it as Authorization: Bearer YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN in your request headers when hitting the Google Docs API endpoints. If you’re getting auth errors, use the exact token string from the login response - format matters. These tokens expire, so add error handling for 401 responses and re-auth when needed. The endpoint alexj mentioned works, but make sure you’re parsing the XML response correctly since the older API returns XML.