Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Introducing the Google Contacts Data API
A common contact list has helped power applications like Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Calendar. And now, with the launch of the Google Contacts Data API, we're opening up this contact list to your applications as well.
Based on AtomPub, the Contacts API can be used to safely read, create, edit, and delete contact information stored with Google, all while keeping users' passwords private via delegated authentication and authorization. Learn the details from Sebastian Kanthak in his announcement post on the Google Data APIs blog, and join the conversation on the Contacts API Group.
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DeWitt: How come I need to be a member of the group to see the archives? I haven't seen this for other Google APIs.
ReplyDelete(BTW, not sure why Blogger displays my nick the way it does -- sorry)
Hi Nick,
ReplyDeleteThe group should be public -- we probably just forgot to open it up at launch. Let me take a look at that right now.
Woooo! Finally! A lot of us out there have been speculating on when and how this would be done. Thanks for making it so!
ReplyDeleteVery exciting! Clearly a vast improvement over third party sites that ask users to hand over their GMail password.
ReplyDeleteAre there plans to augment the data exposed through the contact API?
Rich contact data such as profile photos, affinity, and the like appear to be missing for the moment, even though this data is available from GMail's internal JSON.
Lacking the rich data, some sites will continue to have an incentive to do the wrong thing to scrape the JSON.
On another note: now that that a real API is available, it seems like a good thing to start deprecating and eventually disabling the ability to scrape contact data via a password. Is there a proposed timetable for this migration?
Is this applicable to Google Apps (Free)?
ReplyDelete