Error refreshing the OAuth2 token, message: '{ "error" : "invalid_grant" }' - laravel

Question

I am working with this package Analytics-Laravel 4 for google analytics and I have follower all of the steps correctly. When I try to get the site id for example, I face this error:
Error refreshing the OAuth2 token, message: '{ "error" : "invalid_grant" }'
I have double checked all of the configurations, client id, service_account and private key but the error still occurs.
Anything else I should try to check that maybe would solve this issue?!

Answer 1

I didn't use this package before, I'm using google-api-php-client, but anyways, this error occurs if you don't set the refresh token.
You should know that you need to have the access token ONLY once. You also need to set the access type to be offline, which will provide you with a refresh token that you will use to automatically get a new access token without getting a new code every time your access token expires.
In google's console, I created a Client ID for web application. Make sure you set the redirect URI to your web page where you will receive the code and will extract the access token using that code.
Here is a code example using google-api-php-client, I hope it will help:
You need to run the following code only once, and retrieve and store the access token.
<?php
require_once('google-api-php-client-master/src/Google/Client.php');
session_start();
$client = new Google_Client();
$client->setApplicationName('APP_NAME');
$client->setClientId(YOUR_CLIENT_ID);
$client->setClientSecret('YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET');
$client->setRedirectUri('YOUR_REDIRECT_URI');
$client->setDeveloperKey('YOUR_DEV_KEY');
$client->setScopes(array('https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.readonly'));
$client->setAccessType("offline");
// Step 1: Create an auth url
if (isset($_GET['ref']) && $_GET['ref'] == "1") {
$authUrl = $client->createAuthUrl();
return Redirect::to($authUrl);
}
// Step 2: The user accepted your access now you need to exchange it.
if (isset($_GET['code'])) {
$client->authenticate($_SESSION['code']); //Authenticate the client
$token = $client->getAccessToken(); //Get the access token
var_dump($token); //Store the token in your DB or config file
die();
}
?>
After getting your access token from the code above (which should contain a refresh token), store it in your DB or a config file.
Now the following code should authenticate the client and refresh the access token when it expires via the getAccessToken function
<?php
require_once('google-api-php-client-master/src/Google/Client.php');
require_once('google-api-php-client-master/src/Google/Service/Analytics.php');
$client = new Google_Client();
$client->setApplicationName('APP_NAME');
$client->setClientId(YOUR_CLIENT_ID);
$client->setClientSecret('YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET');
$client->setRedirectUri('YOUR_REDIRECT_URI');
$client->setDeveloperKey('YOUR_DEV_KEY');
$client->setScopes(array('https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.readonly'));
$client->setAccessType("offline"); //Make sure the access type is offline to get a refresh token
$config = CoreConfig::find(1); //Getting the first record from the config table
$client->setAccessToken($config->google_access_token); //Retrieve the access token that you stored and set it to the client object
//Check this the token is expired
if($client->isAccessTokenExpired()) {
$token = json_decode($config->google_access_token, true); //Get the token stored, and convert JSON to array
$client->refreshToken($token['refresh_token']); //Set the refresh token
$newtoken = $client->getAccessToken(); //Call the getAccessToken() function to get a new access token for you
$config->update(array('google_access_token' => $newtoken)); //Store the new token in your DB
}
if ($client->getAccessToken()) {
$analytics = new Google_Service_Analytics($client);
//Do something with the $analytics object
}
?>

Answer 2

It could be the server time. If the local time on your server is out of sync with google's oAuth server even by a few seconds you'll get that error message.
You can check the time by running "date" in the console.
Running "sudo ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com" solved it for us.