Thoughts filed in: Web services

Mixing GData auth with Google Discovery API queries

For those of you who have some experience working with Google's APIs, you may be aware of the fact that they fall into two categories: the Google Data APIs, which is mainly for older services; and the discovery-based APIs, which is mainly for newer services.

There has been considerable confusion regarding the difference between the two APIs. I'm no expert, and I admit that I too have fallen victim to the confusion at times. Both systems now require the use of OAuth2 for authentication (it's no longer possible to access any Google APIs without Oauth2). However, each of Google's APIs only falls into one of the two camps; and once authentication is complete, you must use the correct library (either GData or Discovery, for your chosen programming language) in order to actually perform API requests. So, all that really matters, is that for each API that you plan to use, you're crystal clear on which type of API it is, and you use the correct corresponding library.

The GData Python library has a very handy mechanism for exporting an authorised access token as a blob (i.e. a serialised string), and for later re-importing the blob back as a programmatic access token. I made extensive use of this when I recently worked with the Google Analytics API, which is GData-based. I couldn't find any similar functionality in the Discovery API Python library; and I wanted to interact similarly with the YouTube Data API, which is discovery-based. What to do?