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Nov 28, 2011  ·  #api  ·  1 min read

Google+ API and Library

Google+ has released a rough outline on their API for accessing data.  The Google+ API only allows for read-access to data, but this will still allow you to integrate a visitors social features around Google+.  API calls can either be completed via an API key or an OAuth 2.0 token for user data.The Google+ API follows a typical REST design involving HTTP GET on many API calls and the results are in JSON format.Here is an example API call and response from the web site: Request
GET https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/people/{userId}
Response
{
  "kind": "plus#person",
  "id": "118051310819094153327",
  "displayName": "Chirag Shah",
  "url": "https://plus.google.com/118051310819094153327",
  "image": {
    "url": "https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-XnZDEoiF09Y/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAYCI/7fow4a2UTMU/photo.jpg"
  }
}
For now the Google+ API covers People, Activites, and Commets.  Google has released Google+ API Libraries for various languages that can be downloaded along with starter scripts.
Thanks for reading

I write about Drupal, PHP, and the quiet infrastructure behind large sites — caching, config, and testing. New posts land every week or two.