Connecting Google Cal API and Django

This post was written back in the days where Heroku provided free hosting; do not expect any example projects or links to Heroku to work.

Some tricky configuration is required, and the existing Python-specific documentation is sparse and buggy (or simply not written for a production setting). My eventual solution involves using a Google Cloud Platform service account and a custom Heroku buildpack

The Problem

Little Cabin (my final project for my recently completed General Assembly bootcamp), provides tools for extended families to securely share their vacation property’s logistics and memories. One key feature is allowing the in-app scheduling to sync with a Google Calendar, and though I assumed it would be a simple matter of hooking up to the Google Calendar API, it was by far the most difficult problem to solve.

The Project Setup

To get myself started, I’ve followed along with my two previous blog posts:

I have also created a blog example repo on my GitHub that includes all of the steps in this entire tutorial, so feel free to clone that repo and have a look at the code. You’ll still need to do a lot of person configuration to get it working, including creating your own service account, google calendar, Heroku project, .env files and Heroku config vars, etc.

Calendar Access Module

We will start by creating a new module (just a separate .py file) to contain all of the Calendar API access methods. Python automatically exports, but you must explicitly import them into any code that needs access.

In your main_app/ folder, create a file called calendar_API.py. In that blank file:

touch main_app/calendar_API.py
then in VSCode, add the following to the blank file:

def test_calendar():
	print("RUNNING TEST_CALENDAR()")
	test_event1 = {"start": {"date": "2022-01-01"}, "end": {"date": "2022-01-07"}, "summary":"test event 1"}
	test_event2 = {"start": {"date": "2022-02-01"}, "end": {"date": "2022-02-07"}, "summary":"test event 2"}
	events = [test_event1, test_event2]

	return events

Add Route to URLs

In VSCode, open main_app/urls.py and add the following the following item to the urlpatterns[] array below the existing “home” route. This will give us two pages in total, our “Home” and our “Demo” which will demonstrate the connection to Google Calendar API

path('demo/', views.demo, name='demo'),

Add To Views

In your views.py, import the module method at the top of the file using:

from .calendar_API import test_calendar

Now add a second method which will display the demo template (later on we’ll fill in the code that actually does some work)

def demo(request):
    results = test_calendar()
    context = {"results": results}
    return render(request, 'demo.html', context)

Add To Templates

Create the html template that will serve as the HTML for eventually displaying the fetched results from the API:

touch main_app/templates/demo.html

Add the following to to the blank demo.html file in VSCode:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head> </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Demo</h1>
    <ul>
      {% for result in results %}
      <li>{{result.start.date}}{% if result.end.date %}-{% endif%}{{result.end.date}}: {{result.summary}}</li>
      {% endfor %}
    </ul>
  </body>
</html>

Now, edit your home.html to include a link to this new demo.html. Add the following line after the <h1>Home</h1> line:

<a href="{% url 'demo' %}">Connect to Google Calendar</a>

Install Dependencies

In your terminal, run the following commands to install needed packages and save those as project dependencies:

pip install --upgrade google-api-python-client google-auth-httplib2 google-auth-oauthlib
pip3 freeze > requirements.txt

TEST IT!

Let’s make sure the plumbing is working before we add more logical complexity!

In your terminal, start the local server (make sure you’re in your activated env):

python3 manage.py runserver

In your browser

Visit localhost:8000
Click on the “Connect to Google Calendar” link
Confirm the headline “Demo” is displayed

Setting up Calendar Access

These instructions draw heavily on this amazing Stack Overflow answer

Register for Google Service Account

Follow Google’s directions to setup the new credentials here: developers.google.com
You can skip the section entitled: “Delegating domain-wide authority to the service account”
Save the credentials file somewhere memorable; you’ll be using these locally and later when setting up Heroku config vars

Configure a Test Calendar

View your Google Calendar
In the sidebar will be a list of your calendars; click the ”+” button and select “Create New Calendar” from the dropdown
Fill in a name “Example”, and click the “Create Calendar” button
Hover over this newly created calendar back in the sidebar, and click the three vertical dots, and select “Settings and Sharing” from the dropdown
Scroll down to “share with specific people”
Add your newly created service account email address (it will be “client_email” in your saved credentials file)
Scroll down to “Integrate Calendar” and copy the Calendar ID string, then paste it somewhere safe as you’ll need it again soon

Manipulate Calendar from Local Django App

Setup Local Config Vars

Open your local environmental variables file; in this setup it’s example/.env.
Add the following:

# Google API
CAL_ID={{{THE CAL ID YOU COPY-PASTED FROM YOUR GOOGLE CALENDAR SETTINGS PAGE}}}

Create Your Local Credentials File

touch google-credentials.json
Copy paste the entire JSON object from your downloaded credentials file into this newly created .json file. As an example, mine looks like this:

{
  "type": "service_account",
  "project_id": "example",
  "private_key_id": "BLAHBALH",
  "private_key": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nSUUUUUUPER------LONG-------STRING\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n",
  "client_email": "USERNAME@EXAMPLE.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
  "client_id": "1234567890987654321",
  "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
  "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
  "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
  "client_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/robot/v1/metadata/x509/username%40example.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
}

Update Your `.gitignore`

in VSCode open your .gitignore file
Ensure all of the following lines are present, which will prevent git from indexing sensitive information (and later distributing it publicly on your GitHub)

# this hidden folder contains your local, virtual environment
.env

# this hidden file contains sensitive keys and environmental config vars
# if you've named your primary project folder something other than
# 'example' please adjust the following line as needed 
example/.env

# this token contains your sensitive google service account info
google-credentials.json

Important!

Please ensure both example/.env and the newly created google-credentials.json appear greyed out in VSCode

Add The API Calls

Open calendar_API.py, and replace the existing code with everything in the following block (basically replacing our test logging function with the real API calls)

from decouple import config
from google.oauth2 import service_account
import googleapiclient.discovery
import datetime

CAL_ID = config('CAL_ID')
SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar']
SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE = './google-credentials.json'


def test_calendar():
    print("RUNNING TEST_CALENDAR()")
    
    credentials = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE, scopes=SCOPES)
    service = googleapiclient.discovery.build('calendar', 'v3', credentials=credentials)

    # CREATE A NEW EVENT
    new_event = {
    'summary': "Ben Hammond Tech's Super Awesome Event",
    'location': 'Denver, CO USA',
    'description': 'https://benhammond.tech',
    'start': {
        'date': f"{datetime.date.today()}",
        'timeZone': 'America/New_York',
    },
    'end': {
        'date': f"{datetime.date.today() + datetime.timedelta(days=3)}",
        'timeZone': 'America/New_York',
    },
    }
    service.events().insert(calendarId=CAL_ID, body=new_event).execute()
    print('Event created')

 # GET ALL EXISTING EVENTS
    events_result = service.events().list(calendarId=CAL_ID, maxResults=2500).execute()
    events = events_result.get('items', [])
    
    # LOG THEM ALL OUT IN DEV TOOLS CONSOLE
    for e in events:
        print(e)

    return events

Test It, Again!

At this point, running the local server (make sure you’re in your activated env):

python3 manage.py run server and viewing localhost:8000 in browser should display the same button as before. However, now clicking the button should trigger the series of API calls we added above:
Create a new test event on your test calendar
Download ALL events from that calendar (there’s probably only the one unless you manually added any on the Google Calendar site)
Display those downloaded events both as console logs and render them onto the HTML page under the “DEMO” heading

If that’s all working locally, the next big step is adjusting everything so that it works in production on Heroku.

Connecting the Deployed App

These steps come mainly from this excellent DevDojo.com blog post

Add Custom Buildpack

In your browser, head to Heroku and log in
Open up the existing App that you’ve deployed (perhaps you followed my previous blog post: Deploying Django to Heroku?
Choose “Settings” from the nav bar
Scroll down and click the “Add Buildpack” button (there should already be “heroku/python” listed as installed
Paste https://github.com/buyersight/heroku-google-application-credentials-buildpack into the text input box labeled “Enter Buildpack URL”
Click “Save changes”

Add Heroku Config Vars

Scroll up just a bit and click the “Reveal Config Vars” buttons
You will now be adding all of the keys and corresponding values from your local .env file, along with some addition Heroku only entries.
In the KEY box, paste CAL_ID, and in the corresponding VALUE box, paste the string that occurs after the = in your local .env. In my case it looks like this fF43grgewefwFWeww1231233r23rwq@group.calendar.google.com. Make sure there are no quotation marks or spaces before and after the string
Click “Add”
In the new blank KEY box, paste GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS, and in the corresponding VALUE box paste google-credentials.json
Click the “Add” button
In the new KEY box, paste GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS, and in the corresponding VALUE box, paste the entire JSON object. You can literally copy all of the code that is now in your local google-credentials.json, starting with a { and ending with a }
Click the “Add” button

Deploy to Heroku

Head back into your terminal, and save your progress in your local git:
git add .
git commit -m "getting ready for deploy"
Optionally push to your GitHub if you have added a remote repo
Deploy using git push heroku main (or master if you haven’t yet switched your local git to default to the main branch)

Confirm Credentials Were Created

Once you’re notified the deploy was successful, you can use the terminal to manually explore your project’s Heroku server and confirm that the credentials file was created automagically by the build pack and those config vars.

heroku run bash (wait a few seconds for it to log in)
ls
You should see google-credentials.json listed on the floor of your project. Yay!
exit will bring you back onto your local machine

Run It!

Head to your deployed Heroku site, and see if the button still works to populate / print out the Google Calendar events. If so, great job! If not, scope the last paragraph here for some potential debugging tricks.

As noted in the previous article Deploying Django to Heroku, it can be helpful to configure your Django project and Heroku to give more detailed error logging. Check out the instructions on this stackoverflow where they explain adding DEBUG_PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS = True and a LOGGING = { ... } library to their settings.py

Sundial Photo by Marian Kroell on Unsplash

Connecting Google Cal API and Django

Connecting Google Cal API and Django

The Problem

The Project Setup

Calendar Access Module

Add Route to URLs

Add To Views

Add To Templates

Install Dependencies

TEST IT!

Setting up Calendar Access

Register for Google Service Account

Configure a Test Calendar

Manipulate Calendar from Local Django App

Setup Local Config Vars

Create Your Local Credentials File

Update Your .gitignore

Important!

Add The API Calls

Test It, Again!

Connecting the Deployed App

Add Custom Buildpack

Add Heroku Config Vars

Deploy to Heroku

Confirm Credentials Were Created

Run It!

Update Your `.gitignore`