Ruby OAuth Nightmare: Using Contacts API

Question

Hi there, I've been spending the last few days banging my head against the wall on supporting the ability to add a contact to the Google Contacts API in my Rails 3 application. Despite many false starts, I've finally made some progress by employing the Ruby OAuth gem, and following the tutorial here: http://everburning.com/news/google-analytics-oauth-and-ruby-oh-my/

When I follow this in the console, I get further than I do in my Rails app. I can create an access token, authenticate against Google's service with the specific scope of the Contacts API, and apply the oauth_verifier token to get an access token. But when it comes time to push the data, I get this error:

response = at.post("https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/default/full", gdata)
 => #<Net::HTTPUnauthorized 401 Unknown authorization header readbody=true> 

Where does the "readbody=true" header come from, and how would I get rid of it?

But it's worse in the Rails app. I have one controller action ("googlecontacts") that creates the request token and leads the user to the authentication site with Google:

def googlecontacts

@card = Card.find_by_short_link(params[:id])

@consumer = OAuth::Consumer.new( 
  'anonymous', 
  'anonymous', 
  { 
    :site => 'https://www.google.com', 
    :request_token_path => '/accounts/OAuthGetRequestToken', 
    :access_token_path => '/accounts/OAuthGetAccessToken', 
    :authorize_path => '/accounts/OAuthAuthorizeToken', 
    :signature_method => 'HMAC-SHA1',
    :oauth_version => '1.0'
  })

@request_token = @consumer.get_request_token(
  {:oauth_callback => 'http://monkey.dev/cards/google_auth?redir='[email protected]_link}, 
  {:scope => "https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/"}
)

session[:request_token] = @request_token

redirect_to @request_token.authorize_url

end

This appears to work; I get a working request token object, and the user is forwarded to the Google service to authenticate. The callback URL ("google_auth") should take the oauth_verifier token to create an access token. Here's the beginning of the controller:

def google_auth

   @access_token = session[:request_token].get_access_token(:oauth_verifier=>params[:oauth_verifier])

And here's where it craps out. The error on that last line is:

You have a nil object when you didn't expect it!
You might have expected an instance of Array.
The error occurred while evaluating nil.[]

But the values that are in there -- the session[:request_token] and the params[:oauth_verifier] -- are present and accounted for in that action! I can't figure out what is nil here.

So I guess I need to figure out this second problem first, but bonus points for answering the first problem as well. :-)

Thanks for reading.

Aaron.

Answer 1

Try setting/getting the session data with a string not symbol, i.e. session["request_token"], not session[:request_token]. I know I've had that issue before in the past.