Is it possible to load google photos metadata into

Question

I have a project where I have scanned 10,000 family pictures from as far back as the 1900's and I am organizing them in Google Photos. I have a spreadsheet where I was keeping track of the proper dates and captions for the entire collection. I would organize a few at a time but then recently found out about the google photos API.

I would like to use something like the methods Method: mediaItems.list or Method: mediaItems.search to get the data from my photos into the spreadsheet to manage.

The output from these examples is exactly what I'm looking for and would want to load that into a spreadsheet.

It would be super awesome if there was a way to update back from the sheet again as well.

I found this article but the code provided does not work for me.

I have this function now in my sheet

function photoAPI() {
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
  var albums_sh = ss.getSheetByName("albums") || ss.insertSheet("albums", ss.getSheets().length); 
  albums_sh.clear();
  var narray = []; 

  var api = "https://photoslibrary.googleapis.com/v1/albums";
  var headers = { "Authorization": "Bearer " +  ScriptApp.getOAuthToken() };
  var options = { "headers": headers, "method" : "GET", "muteHttpExceptions": true };

  var param= "", nexttoken;
  do {
    if (nexttoken)
      param = "?pageToken=" + nexttoken; 
    var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(api + param, options);
    var json = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());
    json.albums.forEach(function (album) {
      var data = [
        album.title,
        album.mediaItemsCount,
        album.productUrl
      ];
      narray.push(data);
    });
    nexttoken = json.nextPageToken;
  } while (nexttoken);
  albums_sh.getRange(1, 1, narray.length, narray[0].length).setValues(narray);
}

When I run it in debug mode, I get the following error

({error:{code:403, message:"Request had insufficient authentication scopes.", status:"PERMISSION_DENIED"}})

I know this means I need to authenticate but don't know how to make that happen.

I have an API key and a secret from the Google photos API pages.

Edit I used the links from @Tanaike to figure out how to add scopes to my project. I added these three.

• spreadsheets.currentonly
• photoslibrary
• script.external_request

Now when I run in debug mode, I get a 403 error indicating I need to set up my API. Summary of the error is below:

error: code:403 Photos Library API has not been used in project 130931490217 before or it is disabled. Enable it by visiting https://console.developers.google.com/apis/api/photoslibrary.googleapis.com/overview?project=130931490217 Google developers console API activation type.googleapis.com/google.rpc.Help "PERMISSION_DENIED"

When I try to go to the listed URL though, I just get a message that says "Failed to load."

Answer 1

I got my code working with the help of @Tanaike in my comments above. I had two issues.

1) I needed to specify the oauthScopes in appsscript.json which is hidden by default in google scripts. It can be revealed by going to the menu and selecting View > Show Manifest File.

2) I was using a default GCP project which did not have authorization to use the photos API and could not be enabled. I needed to switch to a standard GCP project which I had created earlier and had enabled the photos API.

Here is my original posted function with additional comments after I got it working:

function photoAPI_ListAlbums() {
  // Modified from code by Stackoverflow user Frç Ju at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54063937/0auth2-problem-to-get-my-google-photos-libraries-in-a-google-sheet-of-mine
  // which was originally Modified from http://ctrlq.org/code/20068-blogger-api-with-google-apps-script

  /*
  This function retrieves all albums from your personal google photos account and lists each one with the name of album, count of photos, and URL in a new sheet.

  Requires Oauth scopes. Add the below line to appsscript.json
  "oauthScopes": ["https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets.currentonly", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/photoslibrary", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/photoslibrary.readonly", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/script.external_request"]

  Also requires a standard GCP project with the appropriate Photo APIs enabled.
  https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/cloud-platform-projects
  */

  //Get the spreadsheet object
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
  //Check for presence of target sheet, if it does not exist, create one.
  var albums_sh = ss.getSheetByName("albums") || ss.insertSheet("albums", ss.getSheets().length); 
  //Make sure the target sheet is empty
  albums_sh.clear();
  var narray = []; 

  //Build the request string. Default page size is 20, max 50. set to max for speed.
  var api = "https://photoslibrary.googleapis.com/v1/albums?pageSize=50";
  var headers = { "Authorization": "Bearer " +  ScriptApp.getOAuthToken() };
  var options = { "headers": headers, "method" : "GET", "muteHttpExceptions": true };

  var param= "", nexttoken;

  //Make the first row a title row
  var data = [
    "Title",
    "Item Count",
    "ID",
    "URL"
  ];
  narray.push(data);

  //Loop through JSON results until a nextPageToken is not returned indicating end of data
  do {
    //If there is a nextpagetoken, add it to the end of the request string
    if (nexttoken)
      param = "&pageToken=" + nexttoken; 

    //Get data and load it into a JSON object
    var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(api + param, options);
    var json = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());

    //Loop through the JSON object adding desired data to the spreadsheet.
    json.albums.forEach(function (album) {
      var data = [
        "'"+album.title,  //The prepended apostrophe makes albums with a name such as "June 2007" to show up as that text rather than parse as a date in the sheet.
        album.mediaItemsCount,
        album.id,
        album.productUrl
      ];
      narray.push(data);
    });

    //Get the nextPageToken
    nexttoken = json.nextPageToken;
    //Continue if the nextPageToaken is not null
  } while (nexttoken);

  //Save all the data to the spreadsheet.
  albums_sh.getRange(1, 1, narray.length, narray[0].length).setValues(narray);
}

And here is another function which I created in the same style to pull photo metadata directly. This is what I was originally trying to accomplish.

function photoAPI_ListPhotos() {
  //Modified from above function photoAPI_ListAlbums

  /*
  This function retrieves all photos from your personal google photos account and lists each one with the Filename, Caption, Create time (formatted for Sheet), Width, Height, and URL in a new sheet.
  it will not include archived photos which can be confusing if you happen to have a large chunk of archived photos some pages may return only a next page token with no media items.

  Requires Oauth scopes. Add the below line to appsscript.json
  "oauthScopes": ["https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets.currentonly", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/photoslibrary", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/photoslibrary.readonly", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/script.external_request"]

  Also requires a standard GCP project with the appropriate Photo APIs enabled.
  https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/cloud-platform-projects
  */

  //Get the spreadsheet object
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
  //Check for presence of target sheet, if it does not exist, create one.
  var photos_sh = ss.getSheetByName("photos") || ss.insertSheet("photos", ss.getSheets().length); 
  //Make sure the target sheet is empty
  photos_sh.clear();
  var narray = []; 

  //Build the request string. Max page size is 100. set to max for speed.
  var api = "https://photoslibrary.googleapis.com/v1/mediaItems?pageSize=100";
  var headers = { "Authorization": "Bearer " +  ScriptApp.getOAuthToken() };
  var options = { "headers": headers, "method" : "GET", "muteHttpExceptions": true };

  //This variable is used if you want to resume the scrape at some page other than the start. This is needed if you have more than 40,000 photos.
  //Uncomment the line below and add the next page token for where you want to start in the quotes.
  //var nexttoken="";

  var param= "", nexttoken;
  //Start counting how many pages have been processed.
  var pagecount=0;

  //Make the first row a title row
  var data = [
    "Filename",
    "description",
    "Create Time",
    "Width",
    "Height",
    "ID",
    "URL",
    "NextPage"
  ];
  narray.push(data);

  //Loop through JSON results until a nextPageToken is not returned indicating end of data
  do {
    //If there is a nextpagetoken, add it to the end of the request string
    if (nexttoken)
      param = "&pageToken=" + nexttoken; 

    //Get data and load it into a JSON object
    var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(api + param, options);
    var json = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());

    //Check if there are mediaItems to process.
    if (typeof json.mediaItems === 'undefined') {
      //If there are no mediaItems, Add a blank line in the sheet with the returned nextpagetoken

      //var data = ["","","","","","","",json.nextPageToken];
      //narray.push(data);
    } else {
      //Loop through the JSON object adding desired data to the spreadsheet.
      json.mediaItems.forEach(function (MediaItem) {

        //Check if the mediaitem has a description (caption) and make that cell blank if it is not present.
        if(typeof MediaItem.description === 'undefined') {
            var description = "";
          } else {
            var description = MediaItem.description;
          }

        //Format the create date as appropriate for spreadsheets.
        var d = new Date(MediaItem.mediaMetadata.creationTime);

        var data = [
          MediaItem.filename,
          "'"+description, //The prepended apostrophe makes captions that are dates or numbers save in the sheet as a string. 
          d,
          MediaItem.mediaMetadata.width,
          MediaItem.mediaMetadata.height,
          MediaItem.id,
          MediaItem.productUrl,
          json.nextPageToken
        ];
        narray.push(data);
      });
    }

    //Get the nextPageToken
    nexttoken = json.nextPageToken;    

    pagecount++;
    //Continue if the nextPageToaken is not null
    //Also stop if you reach 400 pages processed, this prevents the script from timing out. You will need to resume manually using the nexttoken variable above.
  } while (pagecount<400 && nexttoken);

    //Continue if the nextPageToaken is not null (This is commented out as an alternative and can be used if you have a small enough collection it will not time out.)
  //} while (nexttoken);

  //Save all the data to the spreadsheet.
  photos_sh.getRange(1, 1, narray.length, narray[0].length).setValues(narray);
}

Because of the limitations of the ListPhotos function and the fact that my library is so enormous, I am still working on a third function to pull photo metadata from all the photos in specific albums. I'll edit this answer once I pull that off.