How do I use Google's "Simple API Access key" to access Google Calendar info (PHP)?

Question

I'm trying to use the Google API v3 to access one google calendar and according to the documentation here : http://code.google.com/apis/calendar/v3/using.html#intro and here : https://code.google.com/apis/console/, the solution I need is the "Simple API Access" & "Key for server apps (with IP locking)".

Now, when I create a page with this code :

session_start();

require_once 'fnc/google-api-php-client/src/apiClient.php';
require_once 'fnc/google-api-php-client/src/contrib/apiCalendarService.php';

$apiClient = new apiClient();
$apiClient->setUseObjects(true);
$service = new apiCalendarService($apiClient);

if (isset($_SESSION['oauth_access_token'])) {$apiClient->setAccessToken($_SESSION['oauth_access_token']);
} else {
    $token = $apiClient->authenticate();
    $_SESSION['oauth_access_token'] = $token;
}

and in my "config.php" file I add ONLY my developper key (in place of the "X") :

global $apiConfig;
$apiConfig = array(
    // True if objects should be returned by the service classes.
    // False if associative arrays should be returned (default behavior).
    'use_objects' => false,

    // The application_name is included in the User-Agent HTTP header.
    'application_name' => '',

    // OAuth2 Settings, you can get these keys at https://code.google.com/apis/console
    'oauth2_client_id' => '',
    'oauth2_client_secret' => '',
    'oauth2_redirect_uri' => '',    

    // The developer key, you get this at https://code.google.com/apis/console
    'developer_key' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',

    // OAuth1 Settings.
    // If you're using the apiOAuth auth class, it will use these values for the oauth consumer key and secret.
    // See http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/RegistrationForWebAppsAuto.html for info on how to obtain those
    'oauth_consumer_key'    => 'anonymous',
    'oauth_consumer_secret' => 'anonymous',

But then I get errors and it tells me it's trying to authenticate using the "OAuth 2.0" system which I don't want to use. I only want to access one calendar with an API key.

And amazingly, when I search in google "Simple API Access key" I find nothing, nothing on their docs, no examples, no tutorials, nothing. Am I the only one using this thing?

So can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

(i know this is an old question but i would've been glad if someone gave a real answer here so i'm doing it now)

---

I came on the same problem, Simple API access is not well documented (or maybe just not where i searched), but using the Google API Explorer i found a way to get what i need, which is in fact pretty straightforward. You don't need specific lib or anything : it's actually really simple.

In my case i simply needed to search a keyword on G+, so i just had to do a GET request:

https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/activities?query={KEYWORD}&key={YOUR_API_KEY}

Now, for a calendar access (see here), let's pretend we want to fetch access control rules list. We need to refer to calendar.acl.list which give us the URI :

https://www.googleapis.com/calendar/v3/calendars/{CALENDAR_ID}/acl?key={YOUR_API_KEY}

Fill in the blanks, and that's pretty much all you need to do. Get a server key (API Access submenu), store it somewhere in your project and call it within URIs you're requesting.

Answer 2

You cannot access your calendar information using API Key. API keys (or simple API acess key) are not authorized tokens and can only be used for some API calls such as a Google search query etc; API keys will not let you access any user specific data, which I am assuming is your objective through this calendar application.

Also, from what I see in your code, you are creating a client object which is going to use OAuth 2.0 authentication and hence you are getting authentication error messages.