Getting google plus shares for a given URL in PHP

Question

I want to get the number of shares on google plus for a given URL in PHP. I found this function to do that:

function get_shares_google_plus($url) {
  $curl = curl_init();
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://clients6.google.com/rpc");
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, '[{"method":"pos.plusones.get","id":"p","params":{"nolog":true,"id":"' . $url . '","source":"widget","userId":"@viewer","groupId":"@self"},"jsonrpc":"2.0","key":"p","apiVersion":"v1"}]');
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-type: application/json'));
  $curl_results = curl_exec ($curl);
  curl_close ($curl);
  $json = json_decode($curl_results, true);
  print_r($json);
  return intval( $json[0]['result']['metadata']['globalCounts']['count'] );
}

However, I always get the same message: Notice: Undefined index: result in ....

I make print_r($json), and I get: Array ( [0] => Array ( [error] => Array ( [code] => 400 [message] => Invalid Value [data] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [domain] => global [reason] => invalid [message] => Invalid Value ) ) ) [id] => p ).

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The RPC API was never meant for public use and Google changed authentication in order to prevent abuse. Thus, the code that you posted does not work any longer. However, I found a much simpler solution:

Update (23.01.2013): Google blocked this URL in december 2012 - so this method doesn't work any longer!
Update (15.05.2013): The method works again!

<?php
/**
 * Get the numeric, total count of +1s from Google+ users for a given URL.
 * @author          Stephan Schmitz <[email protected]>
 * @copyright       Copyright (c) 2013 Stephan Schmitz
 * @license         http://eyecatchup.mit-license.org/  MIT License
 * @link            <a href="https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/8495140">Source</a>.
 * @param   $url    string  The URL to check the +1 count for.
 * @return  intval          The total count of +1s.
 */
function getGplusShares($url) {
    $url = sprintf('https://plusone.google.com/u/0/_/+1/fastbutton?url=%s', urlencode($url));
    preg_match_all('/{c: (.*?),/', file_get_contents($url), $match, PREG_SET_ORDER);
    return (1 === sizeof($match) && 2 === sizeof($match[0])) ? intval($match[0][1]) : 0;
}

---

Update (18.01.2014): Here's an improved version that uses curl, a fallback host and does some error handling (the latest version can be found here https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/8495140).

<?php
/**
 * GetPlusOnesByURL()
 *
 * Get the numeric, total count of +1s from Google+ users for a given URL.
 *
 * Example usage:
 * <code>
 *   $url = 'http://www.facebook.com/';
 *   printf("The URL '%s' received %s +1s from Google+ users.", $url, GetPlusOnesByURL($url));
 * </code>
 *
 * @author          Stephan Schmitz <[email protected]>
 * @copyright       Copyright (c) 2014 Stephan Schmitz
 * @license         http://eyecatchup.mit-license.org/  MIT License
 * @link            <a href="https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/8495140">Source</a>.
 * @link            <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/13385591/624466">Read more</a>.
 *
 * @param   $url    string  The URL to check the +1 count for.
 * @return  intval          The total count of +1s.
 */
function GetPlusOnesByURL($url) {
    !$url && die('No URL, no results. ;)');

    !filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) &&
        die(sprintf('PHP said, "%s" is not a valid URL.', $url));

    foreach (array('apis', 'plusone') as $host) {
        $ch = curl_init(sprintf('https://%s.google.com/u/0/_/+1/fastbutton?url=%s',
                                      $host, urlencode($url)));
        curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
            CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => 1,
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
            CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => 0,
            CURLOPT_USERAGENT      => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) ' .
                                      'AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) ' .
                                      'Chrome/32.0.1700.72 Safari/537.36' ));
        $response = curl_exec($ch);
        $curlinfo = curl_getinfo($ch);
        curl_close($ch);

        if (200 === $curlinfo['http_code'] && 0 < strlen($response)) { break 1; }
        $response = 0;
    }
    !$response && die("Requests to Google's server fail..?!");

    preg_match_all('/window\.__SSR\s\=\s\{c:\s(\d+?)\./', $response, $match, PREG_SET_ORDER);
    return (1 === sizeof($match) && 2 === sizeof($match[0])) ? intval($match[0][1]) : 0;
}

---

Update (02.11.2017): The +1 count is officially dead! As announced in this Google+ Post by Product Manager John Nack Google recently removed the share count (aka +1 Count) from their web Sharing buttons. (They claim that the purpose of this move is for making the +1 button and share box load more quickly.)

Answer 2

This code is not going to work. Additionally, there's no publicly available API that provides this count.

This code uses the RPC API that powers the +1 button. This API is not an officially supported API, and is not intended to be used outside of the internal implementation of Google+ plugins.