execute oauth2 headless in python going against google apis

Question

Google's youtube Analytics API is Oauth2 based only. I am using the below test script to see if I can gain access:

import os
import google.oauth2.credentials
import google_auth_oauthlib.flow
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from googleapiclient.errors import HttpError
from google_auth_oauthlib.flow import InstalledAppFlow

SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/yt-analytics.readonly']

API_SERVICE_NAME = 'youtubeAnalytics'
API_VERSION = 'v2'
CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE = 'client_secret.json'
def get_service():
  flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE, SCOPES)
  credentials = flow.run_console()
  return build(API_SERVICE_NAME, API_VERSION, credentials = credentials)

def execute_api_request(client_library_function, **kwargs):
  response = client_library_function(
    **kwargs
  ).execute()

  print(response)

if __name__ == '__main__':
  # Disable OAuthlib's HTTPs verification when running locally.
  # *DO NOT* leave this option enabled when running in production.
  os.environ['OAUTHLIB_INSECURE_TRANSPORT'] = '1'

  youtubeAnalytics = get_service()
  execute_api_request(
      youtubeAnalytics.reports().query,
      ids='channel==MINE',
      startDate='2017-01-01',
      endDate='2017-12-31',
      metrics='estimatedMinutesWatched,views,likes,subscribersGained',
      dimensions='day',
      sort='day'
  )

my problem is that this script requres me to open a browser, set a link, login, then get a token cable.

Is there ANY way to do this in a "headless" mode? I need to pull these APIs for machine-to-machine transfer.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Do it once, then save the credentials object returned by credentials = flow.run_console() to either a database or a file. This contains a "refresh token" which can be used in subsequent api calls, meaning you can skip the flow.run_console step, and just use the saved credentials in a build(API_SERVICE_NAME, API_VERSION, credentials = credentials) call.

There's a note about this in the docs here:

https://developers.google.com/youtube/reporting/guides/authorization/installed-apps#exchange-authorization-code