G Suite Developers Blog

Resumable Upload for the Google Data APIs

March 22, 2010

backing up local filesDocuments List APIGoogle Data APIsResumableHttpRequestsProposalPOST /feeds/upload/create-session/default/private/full?convert=false HTTP/1.1
Host: docs.google.com
GData-Version: 3.0
Authorization: <your authorization header here>
Content-Length: 292
Content-Type: application/atom+xml
X-Upload-Content-Type: application/msword
X-Upload-Content-Length: 7654321

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<entry xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
xmlns:docs="http://schemas.google.com/docs/2007">
<category scheme="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind"
term="http://schemas.google.com/docs/2007#document"/>
<title>MyTitle</title>
<docs:writersCanInvite value="false"/>
</entry>Content-RangePUT <unique_upload_uri> HTTP/1.1
Host: docs.google.com
Content-Length: 100000
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Range: bytes 0-99999/1234567

<bytes 0-99999>documentationclient library samplesPosted by Eric Bidelman, Google Apps API Team

Enabling Single Sign on with OpenID for the Google Apps Marketplace

March 16, 2010

Users of cloud-based business applications shouldn’t have to create, remember and maintain new credentials for each of the many apps that they use. With applications on the Google Apps Marketplace, they don’t need to-- these applications allow users to login with their existing Google Apps accounts using OpenID.OpenID

To enable the Single Sign On experience for Marketplace apps, developers simply need to add a universal navigation link and an OpenID realm to their application manifest. Adding these elements is easy-- it’s just a snippet of XML:

<Extension id="navLink" type="link">
  <Name>Amazing Cloud App</Name>      
  <Url>http://www.example.com/home.php?domain=${DOMAIN_NAME}</Url>
</Extension>

<Extension id="realm" type="openIdRealm">
  <Url>http://www.example.com</Url>
</Extension>

With this XML in the application manifest, a link called “Amazing Cloud App” will appear in the universal navigation of all Google Apps. Also, if one of the realms specified in the manifest file precisely matches the openid.realm in the OpenID request, then the user will be seamlessly signed into the app after clicking on the link in the universal navigation (without seeing a typical OpenID interstitial allow/deny page).

Of course, you’ll also need code in your application which accepts OpenID logins. In addition to open source libraries, here are a few companies that are making it easier for cloud applications to integrate with the Google Apps Marketplace. Their code provides simple APIs with which developers can integrate, leaving some of the complexities of the OpenID protocol to be implemented by the experts -- no need to hand-roll your own OpenID code.

JanRain
JanRain’s open source PHP and Ruby OpenID libraries and on-demand RPX solution enabled the implemention of OpenID for many of the companies that launched on the Google Apps Marketplace by writing simple code or web service calls.
Ping Identity
Ping’s PingFederate is an on-premise service that allows SaaS applications to easily accept OpenID and SAML-based logins by integrating with their libraries or using their web server or application server plug-ins.
TriCipher
TriCipher’s myOneLogin Identity Services is an on-demand application that allows developers to accept OpenID, SAML and other federation protocols by writing simple web service calls.

Their are plenty of open source OpenID libraries available for other platforms, such as OpenID4Java (using Step2 code for Google Apps) and DotNetOpenAuth. More information on implementing Single Sign On in Google Apps Marketplace apps can be found on code.google.com.

If you need additional information on building apps for the Google Apps Marketplace, see the Developer’s Overivew on code.google.com.

Posted by Ryan Boyd, Google Apps Marketplace Team

Google Apps security and high availability support EZasset success

March 15, 2010

Editor's Note: This post was written by Paul Marsolan from StrongTech, an asset management company, and makers of EZasset. We invited StrongTech to share their experiences building an application on top of Google Apps utilizing some of our APIs.

StrongTech Asset Management is a leading asset manager for federal agencies, institutions, enterprises and financial intermediaries, worldwide. StrongTech provides strategies and services that span the full spectrum of asset classes including: IT assets, wireless assets, weapons, healthcare assets, real estate, infrastructure, and energy.

In 2009, StrongTech, makers of EZasset, made the decision to port our application from Amazon EC2 to Google App Engine for two reasons: security and server management. While Amazon EC2 is an excellent platform, due to our government contracts and growing business clients we needed the most secure platform possible. The Amazon EC2 is a raw nuts and bolts server system. The EC2 offers developers the same environment as if there were servers in a server room at the office. EZasset decided that we did not want to worry about backups, server patches, firewall settings, load balancing, scalability, or other issues. We wanted to focus on programing and offer a great product for a great price. We made the decision to let Google focus on the server and security management for us.

What attracted us to the Google Apps Marketplace from the technical standpoint was the security offered through the Marketplace, and the scalability. We don’t need to worry if we have a thousand new clients sign up in one day: Google Apps Marketplace can handle our success. From the business side, getting EZasset in front of customers on the Google Apps Marketplace, and credibility of Google itself, are immeasurable. Millions of people use Google to find solutions for problems; it would have been foolish of us to not be a part of the Marketplace.

Google services enhance our already feature rich applications. Integrating Google Calendar, Google Documents, and others, has allowed our software to be more powerful without sacrificing user friendliness. We use Google Calendar for maintenance tracking and notifications, Google Talk for real time communication, Google Docs for easy document uploads, and Google Spreadsheet for importing and exporting data into and out of EZasset.com. We’re even able to offer a robust support forum for our customers by using Google Sites.

The security, ease of integration and scalability of Google Apps and the high availability of Google App Engine made porting an easy choice. EZasset has grown with Google, and now with Google's application marketplace, we can grow our business even more.

To put it simply: We are able to focus on what we do best, providing an easy to use asset management system, while Google does what they do best; providing secure, high availability servers.

Like any platform, there are positives and negatives. But the flexibility and power of the system, allows for creative solutions. Since there is no “computer” that the code actually sits on, development of applications is done differently than on classic web servers (EC2, your own servers). With our former deployment on EC2, uploaded photos could be stored on a web server hard drive. Google App Engine doesn’t have a hard drive to access per se, but we were able to use Google Datastore, and store the photo as a data “blob”. Other platforms might not have allowed such a creative solution.

Google Data Store is easy to work with. Below are code snippets that show how we upload and store pictures in the Google Data Store.

Upload image on Google App Engine code:

1.1 Create Data Bean Class, for example Photo

import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.Enumerated;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.GenerationType;
import javax.persistence.Id;

import com.google.appengine.api.datastore.Blob;

@Entity
    public class Photo implements Serializable {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long key;

    @Enumerated
    private Blob imageData;

    ......
   }


1.2. In code, create instance for class Photo and fill it.

    ...
    InputStream stream = ..
    Photo photo = new Photo();
    photo.setImageData( new Blob(IOUtils.toByteArray(stream)));
    ...

1.3 Save instance

    EntityManager em = null;
        try{
            em = EMF.getEM();
            em.getTransaction().begin();
            em.persist(photo);
            em.getTransaction().commit();
        }catch(Throwable t){
            t.printStackTrace();
            if(em != null){
                em.getTransaction().rollback();
            }
        }
        finally{
            if(em.isOpen() || em != null ){
                em.close();
            }
        }

TIP: Google App Engine offers high availability by loading applications across many different “servers” in the platform. This allows your application to be instantly accessible when it is in frequent use. When an application is not getting consistent traffic, Google App Engine will “spin down” the application after some inactivity. This can cause a slower initial load of the large complex applications. Compare it to revisiting a website with no “cookies” saved. After the initial load the application will run quickly once more.

Getting Started Is Easy - Google App Engine is a platform, and it is different than programming on a server. There is a learning curve associated with development on GAE. Once our developers had a week or so to play around with the GAE, they found it is was very easy to program on it. Google supplies a Google Group that has a wealth of information from developers, with Googlers answering questions. We were able to make the port of EZasset in a shorter time then we expected. We also get all the great benefits of high availability, better server management, and security.

Our asset management software is innovative, high quality, powerful and feature rich. We needed a platform that would allow us to continue to provide the high level of quality our customers expect. Google App Engine has allowed us to do that, and do it in the most secure, available platform.

See EZasset in action at the Google I/O Conference in the Developer Sandbox.

Integrating with Google Apps using Gmail contextual gadgets

March 12, 2010

Campfire OneGoogle Apps MarketplaceGoogle Data APIsvideos, photos, and moreAppirioPS Connect

fill out this formGoogle I/Oour sessionPosted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead, Google Enterprise team

How to integrate with Google Apps and get listed on Google Apps Marketplace

March 12, 2010

Google Apps MarketplaceIntegrate with Google Apps and the Google Apps MarketplacePost and vote for questionsregister for the webinar here

Publish your scripts to the Apps Script Gallery

March 10, 2010

Today, we are excited to make Google Apps Script available to everyone. Some of you may already be familiar with Google Apps Script within Google Apps, but in case you are new to it, Google Apps Script provides a powerful and flexible scripting environment that lets you automate actions across your spreadsheets, sites, calendars, and many other services.

An important new feature of Apps Script is a script gallery, where developers can easily publish their scripts to make them accessible to everyone. You can find the gallery by going to Insert and then selecting Script...in any Google spreadsheet.

Recently, the Google Apps team in New York put together a Movie Night script to help us easily figure out which movies were playing nearby and vote for our favorites - you can read more about it here. Let’s take a closer look at how the script works and how we published it to the new Apps Script Gallery.

We start by bringing up the script editor from a spreadsheet (Tools -> Scripts -> Script editor...).

The first step is to fetch a list of movies playing in a given area at a given time. We use the Google search results for a movie query as follows:

varresults = UrlFetchApp.fetch('http://www.google.com/movies?hl=en&near='+
zipcode +'&dq=movies&sort=1').getContentText();
vardoc = Xml.parse(results,true);

We can then use Apps Script’s handy Xml service to parse the results. The next step is to send an email to our friends asking them to vote. This is the slightly tricky part:

In the spreadsheet, select Form -> Create a form to open the form creation window.
Add two questions, one titled “Movie”, and the other “Attendee” - we don’t care too much about any other text as it will all be replaced by the script at run-time.
Close the form creation window.
In the spreadsheet, select Form -> Go to live form, and copy the ‘formkey’ parameter from the address bar.
Open the script in the editor, and insert the ‘formkey’ into line 2 of the script.

Phew! That was the tricky part. In summary, we just created a form for the spreadsheet, but instead of using that form directly, we’re going to use a form that is dynamically generated by the script. However, we still need the special key to correctly route submissions to the spreadsheet (and to validate those submissions).

After that, we can put together a list of recipients by calling the contacts service and reading the Gmail ‘Friends’ group:

varcontactGroup = ContactsApp.findContactGroup(’System Group: Friends’);
varpeople = contactGroup.getContacts();

Lastly, we put the movie thumbnails and descriptions in the email body - tailored to each recipient, so that we’ll know who voted:

varemailBody = "";
for(variinmovies) {
// add the image, title etc to emailBody (as HTML)
}
varaddresses = getFriends_();
for(variinaddresses) {
var email = email_header + form_key + emailBody + email_footer;
MailApp.sendEmail(addresses[i],"Movie tonight?", "", {htmlBody: email});
}

Check out the documentation and get started building your scripts - we look forward to seeing your gallery submissions. To share your masterpiece with the world, select Share -> Publish Script...from the script editor - it's that easy!

Also, for those attending Google I/O this year, be sure check out the Google Apps Script talk on the Enterprise track.
Posted by Nikhil Singhal, Google Apps Script Engineer

Dito Directory integration with Google Apps

March 10, 2010

Editor's Note: This post was written by Jim McNelis and Vinay Thakker of Dito, a provider of Google Apps deployment, training, integration, and support services, and makers of Dito Directory. We invited Dito to share their experiences building an application for the Google Apps Marketplace on top of Google Apps utilizing some of our APIs. You can meet Dito at Google I/O May 19 - 20 in San Francisco where they will be in the Developers Sandbox.great sales channelLeveraging Google scalability command pattern designBrowser history and state related issuesStep 1public class MyApp implements EntryPoint, HistoryListener{
public void onModuleLoad(){}public void onHistoryChanged(String historyToken){}}// MyAppStep 2public void onModuleLoad(){if (History.getToken().isEmpty())History.newItem(“myInitialState”);
History.addHistoryListener(this);History.fireCurrentHistoryState(this);}Step 2.5public void onHistoryChanged(String historyToken){if (“myInitialState”.equals(historyToken)){// render the app appropriately for this state.// this state is accessible at thisPage.html#myInitialState}if (“myOtherStateName”.equals(historyToken)){// render it another way..}}