Is the contacts API dead? - google-api

Question

Does the contacts API still work for anyone? A while back I started getting 403 errors from the API. I run my backup script once a week. Every user that I can't back up, I retry every hour until the next week. Over the span of the week I will end up with a couple of contacts entries, but not a significant amount. This leads me to believe that my code still works since I get some contacts. Anyone have any insight?
Note: I also use the same code/framework to backup Google Drive and Google Calendars for my organization and have not had any issues.
function retrieveAllUserContacts($user)
{
$nextLink = "https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/$user/full";
$params = array('xoauth_requestor_id' => $user);
while($nextLink != '')
{
$header = array('GData-Version: 3.0');
$result = sendOAuthRequest('GET', $nextLink, $params, $header);
$params = array('xoauth_requestor_id' => $user);
$nextLink = '';
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$xmlObj = simplexml_load_string($result);
if($xmlObj === false)
{
echo "adding $user to retry list. Result : " . print_r($result, true) . "\n";
addUserToRetryList($user);
exit(1);
}
foreach($xmlObj->link as $link)
{
if($link['rel'] == 'next')
{
$nextLink = $link['href'];
}
if($nextLink != '')
{
$urlSplit = explode('?', $nextLink);
$nextLink = $urlSplit[0];
$urlParams = explode('&', $urlSplit[1]);
foreach($urlParams as $urlParam)
{
$urlParamSplit = explode('=', $urlParam);
$params[$urlParamSplit[0]] = $urlParamSplit[1];
}
break;
}
}
foreach($xmlObj->entry as $entry)
{//get contacts
...
}
function sendOAuthRequest($httpMethod, $url, $parameters, $header=array())
{
global $CONSUMER_KEY;
global $CONSUMER_SECRET;
$consumer = new OAuthConsumer($CONSUMER_KEY, $CONSUMER_SECRET, NULL);
$request = OAuthRequest::from_consumer_and_token($consumer, NULL, $httpMethod, $url, $parameters);
// Sign the constructed OAuth request using HMAC-SHA1
$request->sign_request(new OAuthSignatureMethod_HMAC_SHA1(), $consumer, NULL);
// Make signed OAuth request to the Contacts API server
if(count($parameters))
{
if(strpos($url, '?') === false)
{
$url .= '?' . implode_assoc('=', '&', $parameters);
}
else
{
$url .= '&' . implode_assoc('=', '&', $parameters);
}
}
$header[] = $request->to_header();
return send_request($request->get_normalized_http_method(), $url, $header);
}
Here is the OAuth Class code : http://pastebin.com/hH4SM9nn I can say that it works for Google Drive and Google Calendar APIs and also that this code worked for over a year without issue.

Answer 1

A number of problems could be causing this. Since your question isn't specific and gives no code sample, here are some of those potential problems:
You have not moved to HTTPS as opposed to HTTP
your GET request specifies a "default" user, where the authority is not always given
You are trying to get too many contacts
There are also issues with authorisation and permissions as of late, one "fix" as such is documented in this StackOverflow answer. It concerns adding not only a google account, but the gmail address associated with that account to the analytics service, via this link.