Google Contacts Data API and PHP

Question

I'm developing a PHP application to retrieve the list of contacts from a GMail account. I'm looking for a solution which would enable the user of my application to provide the login and password to their Gmail account in my application (as opposed to getting redirected to Google) and then automatically do the retrieval. The retrieval process can be run in PHP or JavaScript (which would then feed the list of contacts back to PHP using Ajax).

Is it possible to do that? Which JavaScript API should I use for that? Can someone point me at the right chapter in Google Contacts Data API documentation?

Answer 1

This is really not advised - google provide OAuth for a reason - so that users won't have to give their credentials to 3'rd parties.

Check out http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/OAuth.html

Speaking only for my self (and all other developers I know), having to hand over my credentials to 3'rd parties is a real no-no.

Answer 2

I haven't tested it myself but it looks nice: http://gmail-lite.sourceforge.net/wordpress/

OAuth is nice idea, but unfortunately probably not useful in this case, because as far as I know Google doesn't provide API for Gmail.

Answer 3

google now provides oauth api for gmail, but i;m hunting examples of use... can anyone post or point me too? specifically i cannot find how to send emails from a users email address.

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