How to do Partial Response with Google URL Shortener API - google-api

Looking at the documentation on this API there is a page on performance to cut back the number of keys in the JSON dictionary returned. URL Shortener Performance Tips
Of the three dictionary keys returned in the insert request of this API, I am only interested in the shortened URL. The id key. Looking at the above documentation I would have expected this to work:
The POST request https://www.googleapis.com/urlshortener/v1/url?fields=id?key=YOUR-API-KEY
But with the fields=id added the request comes back invalid.
How do you set only a partial response for this API to only return the id key?

Turns out the comment from abraham steered me in the right direction on this problem. I was able to find the Try it tool option without OAuth and it worked also to my surprise. Looking at the request it generated I found that it was a syntax error on my part looking at the url given in my original question. It should be:
?fields=id&
not
?fields=id?

Related

Google Api Ruby Client to return the actual HTTP response, not the helper object

Is there an easy way to ask the google api ruby client to just give you back the stock HTTP response, rather than to perform the lovely, but slightly limiting translation into one of their ruby representable objects?
e.g.
response = Gmail.client.get_user_message("me", id)
=> #<Google::Apis::GmailV1::Message
response = Gmail.client.list_user_messages("me")
=> #<Google::Apis::GmailV1::ListMessagesResponse
but
response = Gmail.client.delete_user_message("me", id)
=>nil #successfully deleted
Now that's all fine and dandy, except that sometimes I just want to know what sort of response is going to come back. i.e. an HTTP response with maybe some JSON in the body. And then I'll worry about what I do with it...
I can take the response and use the
response.to_json
to get the body of the json that would have come back (though I still won't have the response code, and I need to KNOW that it's one of those objects first).
The client library is definitely getting that, it's just converting it into these objects before it lets me see it. And if I don't know that it's a google object (and not nil) I can't run that to_json consistently....
Any ideas other than second guess what google is going to send me back?
(I should note that this has come about when trying to move a library from dealing with their 0.8 api to their 0.9 api, so call me a cynic if you must but my faith that google won't make breaking changes to those objects returned is at a low ebb...
As far as I know, it is possible to ask the server to send only the fields you really need and get a partial response instead of the default full response as mentioned in Performance Tips.
However, I suggest that you please check the documentation for the specific API you are using to see if the field you're looking for is currently supported. For the Gmail API, you may go through Working with partial resources.
Here are the two types of partial requests that you can use:
Partial response: A request where you specify which fields to include in the response (use the fields request parameter).
Patch: An update request where you send only the fields you want to change (use the PATCH HTTP verb).
Hope that helps!

Google Global Address List for Domain limited to 250 results [rehash]

Reposting due to lack of answers
I'm trying to query Google Global Address List for a specific domain, being led by this answer here (Specifically the answer by Jay Lee).
It's all well and good and works perfectly in Google's OAuth Playground, however it seems to be limited to 250 users. Given that this feature seems completely undocumented, and that I can't tell by looking at their github repo (specifically this file), does anyone know how to query for the next 250 users or how to set the number of results?
Thank you!
My last answer was converted into a comment, but I now have a complete answer to this question.
EDIT: I repeatedly mention JSON but you don't need to parse this in JSON to get the syncToken. Google will provide you the syncToken regardless.
The Google GAL API seems to operate in a similar manner to the Google Calendar or YouTube API's "nextPageToken" parameter, which allows you to query the next page of results as long as you have a token.
The Google GAL uses the "syncToken" parameter as a replacement. Much like the other Google API's, if you append this syncToken to the end of your URL, you will get the next page of results. Note that I was unable to get the startIndex parameter to work (which allows you to begin at a specific item in the JSON), so if you are trying to get a specific result through the query you will most likely have to parse the entire JSON file. Inside the parsed JSON, there should be a key called "gal$syncToken." You can find it in the json right before the "entry" key/array which is where all of the global domain contacts are listed.
Here is an example of what it would look like:
"gal$syncToken": {
"$t": "0_1001_17011_AAN3FFNH2AEJ3SFBKZDRS36AHRXHND47YACXLGFJF5QBXCSQLUK57EX3LC765CU5IWG6ZXWHPS5WKHSDFJ26LRI5FRIVIQ3Z532PWKG3ZG45JW3RVCDZMWK5LLLHZSCBTJH5U6Q4LZRG4PKWQE42AOIPC4VJCZQIP5MBJHNUBZZJNLKISKETTQ6DNTRAPTI"
},
Your syncToken will look different. To get the next page of results, Google actually provides a link that already has the syncToken pre-appended:
{
"rel": "next",
"type": "application/atom+xml",
"href": "https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/gal/example.com/full?sync-token=0_1001_17011_AAN3FFNH2AEJ3SFBKZDRS36AYRXHND47YACXLGFJF5QBXCSQLUK57EX3LC765CU5IWG6ZXWHPS5WKHSDFJ26LRI5FRIVIQ3Z562PWKG3ZG45JW3RVCDZMWK5LLLH6SCBTJH5U6Q4LZRG4PKWQE42AOIPC4VJCZQIP5MBJHNUBZZJNLKBSKETTQ6DNTRAPTI"
},
However, this will only give you the next 250 results. If you want more on each page, you can append the max-results parameter to this and have Google spit it back out in JSON format.
https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/gal/example.com/full?sync-token=INSERT_SYNCTOKEN_HERE&alt=json&max-results=10000
Hope this helped anyone seeing this. The Google GAL seems to be largely undocumented for the most part and I was unable to find an answer to this question anywhere else on the internet. If anyone from Google can confirm that this is the best method for accomplishing this that would be great!

How to use spelling suggestion (related query) with Dynamic Result Cluster (GSA)?

We use the Result format (from the Search Protocol) for our results page (we manually parse the XML responds). We wishes now to switch to the Dynamic Result Clusters format. The only problem is that spelling suggestion (Related Queries) doesn't seem to be available using that protocol.
The only solution I seem to find is to:
First do a /clusters... request. If the request return no result...
...to another request to /search... to see if that request would return a spelling suggestion (Related Queries).
Am I missing something? Can the Clusters format return also spelling suggestion?
Got it.
/clusters request are not to be use instead of the /search request.
You must :
First, do a normal /search request.
Then, do a AJAX request to /clusters to produce the suggestion.
So you keep all the features of the /search request (KeyMatches, Related Queries, etc).

How do I parse a POST to my Rails 3.1 server manually?

Scenario:
I have a Board model in my Rails server side, and an Android device is trying to post some content to a specific board via a POST. Finally, the server needs to send back a response to the Android device.
How do I parse the POST manually (or do I need to)? I am not sure how to handle this kind of external request. I looked into Metal, Middleware, HttpParty; but none of them seems to fit what I am trying to do. The reason I want to parse it manually is because some of the information I want will not be part of the parameters.
Does anyone know a way to approach this problem?
I am also thinking about using SSL later on, how might this affect the problem?
Thank you in advance!! :)
I was trying to make a cross-domain request from ie9 to my rails app, and I needed to parse the body of a POST manually because ie9's XDR object restricts the contentType that we can send to text/plain, rather than application/x-www-urlencoded (see this post). Originally I had just been using the params hash provided by the controller, but once I restricted the contentType and dataType in my ajax request, that hash no longer contained the right information.
Following the URL in the comment above (link), I learned the how to recover that information. The author mentions that in a rails controller we always have access to a request variable that gives us an instance of the ActionDispatch::Request object. I tried to use request.query_string to get at the request body, but that just returned an empty string. A bit of snooping in the API, though, uncovered the raw_post method. That method returned exactly what I needed!
To "parse it manually" you could iterate over the string returned by request.raw_post and do whatever you want, but I don't recommend it. I used Rack::Utils.parse_nested_query, as suggested in Arthur Gunn's answer to this question, to parse the raw_post into a hash. Once it is in hash form, you can shove whatever else you need in there, and then merge it with the params hash. Doing this meant I didn't have to change much else in my controller!
params.merge!(Rack::Utils.parse_nested_query(request.raw_post))
Hope that helps someone!
Not sure exactly what you mean by "manually", posts are normally handled by the "create" or "update" methods in the controller. Check out the controller for your Board model, and you can add code to the appropriate method. You can access the params with the params hash.
You should be more specific about what you are trying to do. :)

GET vs POST in AJAX?

Why are there GET and POST requests in AJAX as it does not affect page URL anyway? What difference does it make by passing sensitive data over GET in AJAX as the data is not getting reflected to page URL?
You should use the proper HTTP verb according to what you require from your web service.
When dealing with a Collection URI like: http://example.com/resources/
GET: List the members of the collection, complete with their member URIs for further navigation. For example, list all the cars for sale.
PUT: Meaning defined as "replace the entire collection with another collection".
POST: Create a new entry in the collection where the ID is assigned automatically by the collection. The ID created is usually included as part of the data returned by this operation.
DELETE: Meaning defined as "delete the entire collection".
When dealing with a Member URI like: http://example.com/resources/7HOU57Y
GET: Retrieve a representation of the addressed member of the collection expressed in an appropriate MIME type.
PUT: Update the addressed member of the collection or create it with the specified ID.
POST: Treats the addressed member as a collection in its own right and creates a new subordinate of it.
DELETE: Delete the addressed member of the collection.
Source: Wikipedia
Well, as for GET, you still have the url length limitation. Other than that, it is quite conceivable that the server treats POST and GET requests differently; thus the need to be able to specify what request you're doing.
Another difference between GET and POST is the way caching is handled in browsers. POST response is never cached. GET may or may not be cached based on the caching rules specified in your response headers.
Two primary reasons for having them:
GET requests have some pretty restrictive limitations on size; POST are typically capable of containing much more information.
The backend may be expecting GET or POST, depending on how it's designed. We need the flexibility of doing a GET if the backend expects one, or a POST if that's what it's expecting.
It's simply down to respecting the rules of the http protocol.
Get - calls must be idempotent. This means that if you call it multiple times you will get the same result. It is not intended to change the underlying data. You might use this for a search box etc.
Post - calls are NOT idempotent. It is allowed to make a change to the underlying data, so might be used in a create method. If you call it multiple times you will create multiple entries.
You normally send parameters to the AJAX script, it returns data based on these parameters. It works just like a form that has method="get" or method="post". When using the GET method, the parameters are passed in the query string. When using POST method, the parameters are sent in the post body.
Generally, if your parameters have very few characters and do not contain sensitive information then you send them via GET method. Sensitive data (e.g. password) or long text (e.g. an 8000 character long bio of a person) are better sent via POST method.
Thanks..
I mainly use the GET method with Ajax and I haven't got any problems until now except the following:
Internet Explorer (unlike Firefox and Google Chrome) cache GET calling if using the same GET values.
So, using some interval with Ajax GET can show the same results unless you change URL with irrelevant random number usage for each Ajax GET.
Others have covered the main points (context/idempotency, and size), but i'll add another: encryption. If you are using SSL and want to encrypt your input args, you need to use POST.
When we use the GET method in Ajax, only the content of the value of the field is sent, not the format in which the content is. For example, content in the text area is just added in the URL in case of the GET method (without a new line character). That is not the case in the POST method.

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