https://scarygami.github.io/people-api-demo/
This demo will fetch one "page" of results from the people.connections.list method and display the raw JSON for each contact.
You can then click on "load full data" to fetch the rest of the contact information via people.get for each contact.
Source code for the demo is available if you want to play around some more.
The demo makes use of my discovery-api-elements element, that I should really get around to write a more detailed article about, since, if I may say so myself, this is an awesome way to easily access all of Google's discovery-based APIs and your own Google Cloud Endpoints.
Some takeaways from what I've seen so far in no particular order.
The "resourceNames" are interesting
If you want to fetch the data for a Google(+) account, instead of just using the numeric ID, you will have to usepeople/IDThis is easy enough to get used to, but makes you wonder what other resources they might have planned to include in this API.
The data structure is confusing to look at
To be fair JSON isn't really meant for human consumption, but to be able to work with it programmatically you first have to understand it.Each person has one or more sources where the data comes from.
In most cases there will be two:
CONTACTfrom your Gmail contact informationPROFILEfrom the public Google(+) profile.
{
...,
"metadata": {
"sources": [
{
"type": "CONTACT",
"id": "gmail_id"
},
{
"type": "PROFILE",
"id": "gplus_id"
}
],
"objectType": "PERSON"
},...
}
For each "type" of data (e.g. names, photos, urls, emails, phone numbers, ...) the response will have an array, and each item in this array comes with metadata to show which source the information comes from. While this makes perfect sense for easily parsing and displaying the information programmatically it results in a rather lengthy JSON response. This block here is only for two email addresses:
{
...,
"emailAddresses": [
{
"metadata": {
"primary": true,
"source": {
"type": "CONTACT",
"id": "gmail_id"
}
},
"value": "email1@gmail.com",
"type": "other",
"formattedType": "Other"
},
{
"metadata": {
"source": {
"type": "CONTACT",
"id": "gmail_id"
}
},
"value": "email2@somewhere.com",
"type": "other",
"formattedType": "Other"
}
],...
}
Google+ profile images are broken
A bug that will hopefully be fixed soon, but for now the profile photo URLs that come fromPROFILE give a 404. Interestingly profile photo URLs from CONTACT work, as do cover photo URLs.No access to "private" profile data even if you are allowed to see it
That was one of the biggest problems with/complaints about the Google+ API's people.get method as well. Even if you are using authenticated calls you only get the public Google+ profile information which doesn't include the private/limited data you might see when visiting someone's Google+ profile. Unfortunately that hasn't changed with this API...No Google+ contacts
The people.connections.list method only shows Gmail contacts, and none of your Google+ contacts even if the plus.login scope is included in authentication. So if you want to work with Google+ contacts you will still need to use the people.list method of the Google+ API. And then you might as well use the people.get method of the Google+ API to get the rest of the information as well. The one benefit you get with people.get in the new API, is that any private information that has been added via Google Contacts will be displayed along with the Google+ profile information.No more GData!
And after all my complaints one positive thing to say as well. If you've been using the old GData Contacts API you should switch to this new API asap. I think everyone who has been forced to work with GData will be happy to never see it again ;)So to summarize my thoughts:
Great replacement for the old Contacts API, not really adding much value when working with Google+ contacts.
Curious to see what further features (if any) are planned for this API.
