How do I read a Google Drive Spreadsheet in PHP?

Question

All I\'m trying to do is read a Google Spreadsheet from a web site. I\'ve read and re-read the Google Drive API docs and everything Google Drive PHP on Stack Overflow and I

Answer 1

You need to use oauth, if you don't google will only allow you to make a few requests.

If all you want to do is read data out of a google spreadsheet or write data into it then you can just use the spreadsheet api. Check out php-google-spreadsheet-client.

Answer 2

There is also a much easier, but less clean solution, if you don't want to bother with the API or Google Authentication.

1. Go to your Spreadsheet in Google Drive.
2. Go to files -> Publish on the Web
3. Select the right worksheet and make sure to enable the checkbox always update.
4. Still in the same box you can get a .csv Link to your spreadsheet.

You can now access the contents like any other csv File on the Web. Here is some sample code:

$spreadsheet_url="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=<somecode>&single=true&gid=0&output=csv";

if(!ini_set('default_socket_timeout', 15)) echo "<!-- unable to change socket timeout -->";

if (($handle = fopen($spreadsheet_url, "r")) !== FALSE) {
    while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, ",")) !== FALSE) {
        $spreadsheet_data[] = $data;
    }
    fclose($handle);
}
else
    die("Problem reading csv");

Answer 3

If you want you own file to be read you need a service account instead of a "Client ID for web applications". I've been battling this problem myself for way to long and this brought me the sollution: https://developers.google.com/drive/web/service-accounts

Answer 4

I created a sample project that uses a service account to authenticate against Google Spreadsheets in order to access to the contents of a spreadsheet.

Have a look at the README at https://github.com/juampynr/google-spreadsheet-reader.

Answer 5

Please check the Google Drive PHP Quickstart. You have not actually authorized your client. Starting from $authUrl = $client->createAuthUrl();

All Google Drive requests need authorization of some kind.