Month: May 2015

I’ve noticed a serious uptick in visitors to this blog lately, more than likely fellow coders looking for a solution to this Zend/Google issue. For the heck of it, I’m going to post a single broken php module here. This code returned a list of worksheets for a single spreadsheet. It used to work, and now it don’t:

header("Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *");
header('Content-Type: application/json');
ini_set('default_charset', 'utf-8');
require_once 'Zend/Loader.php';
$username = ...
$password = ...
$sheetkey = ...
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Gdata_AuthSub');
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Gdata_ClientLogin');
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Gdata_Spreadsheets');
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Gdata_Docs');
$service = Zend_Gdata_Spreadsheets::AUTH_SERVICE_NAME;
$client = Zend_Gdata_ClientLogin::getHttpClient($username, $password, $service);
$spreadSheetService = new Zend_Gdata_Spreadsheets($client);
$query = new Zend_Gdata_Spreadsheets_DocumentQuery();
$query->setSpreadsheetKey($sheetkey);
$feed = $spreadSheetService->getWorksheetFeed($query);
...


$feed used to contain a nice little array of worksheets, which I return as a json object, but now the code triggers a jQuery response of:

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 (Internal Server Error)


Feedback is most welcome, please comment here or email me at tetonpost at gmail.

Update: Ok, I’ve managed to construct some code that bounces around the Google servers to create this:

Refresh token: 1/eFTQyK2cuGrI_rfVxeBIgMr_a0aIZHdfYzXB0vCaNyE...
Access token: ya29.gwEfRnS1IrruwXi_0mIL3P9IwLoH_pIPMZbU6wXfY...

Now I just need use these tokens, which only last for milliseconds as I understand, to access the Google API. Do I use Zend at that point? What a bunch of bullshit…

I’ve figured out what’s going on with my code. Google has depreciated Zend Gdata ClientLogin and replaced it with OAuth 2.0.

OAuth is the most convoluted spec I’ve ever seen, and I know it’s being pushed by Google. It effectively routes everything a user does back to Google for security purposes and analysis. Really? Just like the NSA and our phone calls.

I’m a pretty smart code guy but this crap is making my head spin! I could dive into the reasons why, but you’re head would be spinning two sentences in. I really thought it would be cool to create mapping applications using Google spreadsheets in the cloud as a database of sorts, and then they go and do this.

I expect the firestorm of Zend developers to arrive soon and in the meantime, I’m tired, and all of the cool applications I’ve been working on for months, now cease to exist…

I really hate being at the mercy of somebody else, especially if it’s Google. I’ve been developing mapping code for the last few months based on their spreadsheets in the cloud and I’m using the most popular framework, called Zend, which acts as the interface between the Google spreadsheet servers and my PHP code.

Today, all of my code stopped working. I don’t know if Google has a server issue or if they tweaked something today that breaks Zend. It’s a very helpless and frustrating feeling! Like, what’s the 1-800 number for Google API support? There ain’t one!

So, I’ll wait for a while and see if it corrects itself. In the meantime I can’t work on my projects and I’m dealing with the possibility that months of work may be down the drain. Why do I do this shit? Nobody uses my code anyway! I need a new hobby…

Maybe it’s because I’m letting the lawn go to hell and it’s messing up Satellite view?

Or, is that Seattle view…