How to connect to Google Analytics Data API in AIR

zedia.net — Fri, 22 May 2009 03:37:38 +0000

I had a bit of trouble doing just this a while ago, ended up trying many different ways and finally a reader of this blog, Nakamachi, gave me the solution. Because I think many of you are trying to connect to Google Analytics Data API ( or any Google APIs for that matters) I will give you here my solution. My solution only works in AIR; I don’t know why, but as soon as I put it on the web, it stops working. I have found a solution for that problem too but I will keep it for another post.
Here is how you can connect to GData:

import org.httpclient.HttpClient;
import com.adobe.net.URI;
import org.httpclient.events.HttpResponseEvent;
import org.httpclient.events.HttpRequestEvent;
import org.httpclient.HttpRequest;
import org.httpclient.http.Get;
import org.httpclient.events.HttpDataEvent;
 
var _firstBuffer:String = "";
var _secondBuffer:String = "";
 
//this first connection will get the authorization token by sending the user name and password for Google Analytics
function submitForm(email:String, password:String):void {
  var client:HttpClient = new HttpClient();
  var uri:URI = new URI("https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin");
  var variables:Array = [{name:"accountType", value:"GOOGLE"}, {name:"Email", value: email}, {name:"Passwd", value: password}, {name:"service", value: "analytics"}, {name:"source", value: "your-application-identifier"}];
  client.listener.onData = _onFirstData;
  client.listener.onComplete = _onLoaderComplete;
  client.postFormData(uri, variables);
}
 
function _onFirstData(event:HttpDataEvent):void {
  _firstBuffer += event.readUTFBytes();
}
 
//this second connection will request information to GData
//in this case account info for Google Analytics by
//putting the auth token in the header of the request
function _onLoaderComplete(event:HttpResponseEvent):void {
  var tempArray:Array = _firstBuffer.split("Auth=");
 var  _authToken:String = String(tempArray[1]);
 
  var client:HttpClient = new HttpClient();
  var uri:URI = new URI("https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/accounts/default");
  var request:HttpRequest = new Get();
  request.addHeader("Authorization", "GoogleLogin auth=" + _authToken);
 
  client.listener.onData = function(event:HttpDataEvent):void {
    _secondBuffer += event.readUTFBytes();
  }
  client.listener.onComplete = _onSecondLoaderComplete;
  client.request(uri, request);
}
 
function _onSecondLoaderComplete(event:HttpResponseEvent):void {
  trace (_secondBuffer);
}

As you can see in order to circumvent the Authorization header restriction I am using the as3httpclientlib library which requires the as3corelib and as3crypto libraries to compile. Using the same principle you should be able to connect to Google APIs from your AIR application.

Connecting to Google Analytics Data Api using AS3; my failures

zedia.net — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:26:13 +0000

EDIT:
Finally I turned my failures into success you can read it here:
How to connect to Google Analytics Data API in AIR
How to connect to Google Analytics Data API in Flash

These past three days I have spent my time trying to connect from an AIR application to Google Analytics Data Api and I have failed. Sometimes you just admit to yourself thatwhat you want to do is just impossible. The problem is that I know it is feasible, Desktop Reporting is doing it with their AIR application called Polaris. Now all I think about is how I can solve this problem. In this post I’m going to show what I tried in order to accomplish this so that it might help others or that others can help me.

The big obstacle at the root of my problem is the fact that you can’t set the Authorization header in ActionScript which is required to make request to the Google server to get data. Here is how I found out about this:

var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/accounts/default");
 
request.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
var tempHeader:URLRequestHeader = new URLRequestHeader("Authorization", "GoogleLogin auth=" + _authToken);
request.requestHeaders = [tempHeader];
var  _secondLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
_secondLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, _onSecondLoaderComplete, false, 0, true);
_secondLoader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.TEXT;
_secondLoader.load(request);

This resulted in the following runtime error:

ArgumentError: Error #2096: The HTTP request header GoogleLogin auth=DQA … -lQ
cannot be set via ActionScript

From that point on I was aware that you couldn’t set the Authorization request header even thought you see misleading information around the web that doesn’t help. My next try was using HTTPService from the Flex library here is what I tried:

gService.url = "https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/accounts/default";
 
gService.headers["Authorization"] = "GoogleLogin auth=" + _authToken;
var token:AsyncToken = gService.send();
token.addResponder(new Responder(onResponse, onFault));

This ended up with the same result (obviously).

My next try was using the as3httpclient library which I did in this way:

var client:HttpClient = new HttpClient();
var uri:URI = new URI("https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/accounts/default");
var request:HttpRequest = new Get();
request.addHeader("Authorization", "GoogleLogin auth=" + _authToken);
 
client.listener.onData = function(event:HttpDataEvent):void {
trace (event.readUTFBytes)
};
client.request(uri, request);

This seemed to work a bit better but it always traced “200″ and not the xml feed it was supposed to return.

So I am at this point very frustrated because I am not able to do something I know is feasible. I have other step I can take in my project and I have some not very optimal way of getting the data, but I have a very bitter taste left in my mouth. If anyone can help me with this, it would be really appreciated.

zedia flash blog » as3httpclientlib

How to connect to Google Analytics Data API in AIR

Connecting to Google Analytics Data Api using AS3; my failures