Changes to OAuth in Apps Script

Update (2015-06-15): The sunset date listed below has been changed from June 26th to July 6th, 2015.

OAuth is the de facto standard for authorization today and is used by most modern APIs. Apps Script handles the OAuth flow automatically for dozens of built-in and advanced services, but until recently only had limited support for connecting to other OAuth-protected APIs such as Twitter, etc. The URL Fetch service’s OAuthConfig class only works with the older OAuth 1.0 standard and only allows the developer of the script (not its users) to grant access to their data. To address this, we’ve create two new open source libraries:

• OAuth1 for Apps Script
• OAuth2 for Apps Script

With only a few clicks, you can add these libraries to your scripts. The full source code is available on GitHub if you need to tinker with how they work. These libraries allow for greater control over the OAuth flow, including the ability for users to grant access separately, a long standing feature request from the community.

We believe that these open libraries are a better alternative to our previous solution, and therefore we are deprecating the OAuthConfig class. The class will continue to function until July 6, 2015, after which it will be removed completely and any scripts that use it will stop working We’ve prepared a migration guide that walks you through the process of upgrading your existing scripts to use these new libraries.

Separate from these changes in Apps Script and as announced in 2012, all Google APIs will stop supporting OAuth 1.0 for inbound requests on April 20, 2015. If you use OAuthConfig to connect to Google APIs, you will need to migrate before that date. Update your code to use the OAuth2 library or the API’s equivalent Advanced Service if one exists.

We see Apps Script and Sheets as the perfect hub for connecting together data inside and outside of Google, and hope this additional OAuth functionality makes it an even more compelling platform.