There are a number of ways that you can interact with Google Apps: there is the website, the new Google Cloud Connect and an API that allows you to integrate Google Apps with your own solutions. The API is available for python and java and can take some time to get used to, even though Google has done a good job with making it pretty straight forward (comparably). Therefore, there are a couple of tools that ease the learning curve a bit.
GoogleCL on Ubuntu
The first, and easiest is GoogleCL. GoogleCL is a command line version of Google Apps that will allow you to interact with YouTube, Picasa, Blogger and of course Google Docs. To use GoogleCL you’re going to need python-gdata. If you’re using Ubuntu, you would do an apt-get and install python-gdata:
apt-get install python-gdata
Once installed, you’ll want to then download the deb package from Google Code:
wget http://googlecl.googlecode.com/files/googlecl_0.9.11-1_all.deb
Once downloaded, install it using dpkg with the -i option (assuming you’re still using the same working directory:
dpkg -i googlecl_0.9.11-1_all.deb
GoogleCL on Mac OS X
GoogleCL is also available for the Mac. First, download the gdata-python-client from http://code.google.com/p/gdata-python-client/downloads/list and then extract the file (ie – unzip gdata-2.0.13). Next, install it using Python (2.0.13 is the latest version) with your working directory set to the previously extracted folder:
python setup.py install
Next up, let’s grab GoogleCL from the GoogleCL Google Code page:
wget http://googlecl.googlecode.com/files/googlecl-0.9.11.tar.gz
Then hop into the newly extracted directory and run the python installer:
python setup.py install
Using GoogleCL on Mac and Linux
Once GoogleCL has been installed, the use is the same between Mac OS X and Linux. Simply use the newly acquired google command (this is actually a Python front-end to the API at /usr/bin/google) followed by a service and then a verb. Verbs are based on services (not all services offer the same features and therefore do not have the same verbs). A list of services with their verbs includes the following.
docs – Allows for interaction with Google Docs, with verbs that include the following:
- edit – Allows you to indicate an application to use as an editor for the given document (ie – vi).
- delete – Delete a document on Google Docs.
- list – List documents on Google Docs.
- upload – Uploads the specified document (options include title, folder and format of the document being uploaded).
- get – Downloads the specified document in the format specified using the format option.
blogger – Manage content stored using the blogger service.
- post – Allows you to post content (which is then known as blog).
- tag – Requires a title (for blog entries) and the tags that you would like to use with the post in question.
- list – Shows posts (can use blog entry, title and owner as a delimiter, useful when used w/ grep to constrain output).
- delete – Removes a post specified.
picasa – Allows you to interact with the picasa service for posting and obtaining images used with Google Apps.
- get – Download specified albums.
- create – Create an album.
- list – List images.
- list-albums – List albums.
- tag – Tag images
- post – Add a photo to an album.
- delete – Delete a photo or an album.
contacts – Manage contacts (given the lack of an edit option, use an add and then a delete to impart an edit).
- list – Show contacts (can specify fields to constrain output).
- list-groups – Show the groups for a user.
- add – Add a contact.
- add-groups – Create a group of contacts.
- delete-groups – Remove a group of contacts
- delete – Remove a single contact
calendar – Manage calendars.
- add – Create a calendar entry
- list – Show all events on a given calendar.
- today – Show calendar events over the next 24 hour period.
- delete – Remove calendar events.
Beyond GoogleCL
Let’s put this into perspective. Let’s say I have an application, and that application can run a simple shell command. Then, let’s say I create a calendar event in that application. The application could send a command to the shell with a variable. If I had calendar information to create such as “Meeting with KK tomorrow at 9am” then I could send a command as follows:
google calendar add “Meeting with KK tomorrow at 9am”
This would cause the event to appear on my calendar and sync to any devices that were then configured to work with my calendar. But, if I were to issue this command on the server-side then it would attempt to create all events for the same users, which is likely not very helpful for most organizations that have more than one calendar and/or user.
As mentioned /usr/sbin/google is a python script. It makes use of python-gdata and provides a more direct access to the Google Apps API. As such, it allows for far more complex logic than the GoogleCL front-end does. The google script does give savvy developers a look at how Google intends for many of their methods to be used and even allows you to borrow a line or two of code here and there. Simple logic can be parlayed into code quickly using GoogleCL, but you will quickly outgrow what can be done with GoogleCL and move into using the API more directly if you have any projects of substance!