How to get Gmail API Token
Published: 2020-11-17 16:04:16

---
title: How to get Gmail API Token
published: true
---

First of all, login using you google account.

To generate the token, follow the next steps:

1. Generate `credentials.json` from gmail page (next step)
2. Go to [Gmail guide](https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/quickstart/php) and generate the credentials file (just if you dont have one)
3. Create a folder to run the code `mkdir gmail-generate`. 
4. create the quickstart file `touch quickstart.php`
5. Execute `composer require "google/apiclient"`
6. run `php quickstart.php` (file content is below)
7. Now in the folder path you have a `token.json` file

_________

```php
<?php
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

if (php_sapi_name() != 'cli') {
    throw new Exception('This application must be run on the command line.');
}

/**
 * Returns an authorized API client.
 * @return Google_Client the authorized client object
 */
function getClient()
{
    $client = new Google_Client();
    $client->setApplicationName('Gmail API PHP Quickstart');
    $client->setScopes(Google_Service_Gmail::GMAIL_READONLY);
    $client->setScopes(Google_Service_Gmail::GMAIL_MODIFY);
    $client->setAuthConfig('credentials.json');
    $client->setAccessType('offline');
    $client->setPrompt('select_account consent');

    // Load previously authorized token from a file, if it exists.
    // The file token.json stores the user's access and refresh tokens, and is
    // created automatically when the authorization flow completes for the first
    // time.
    $tokenPath = 'token.json';
    if (file_exists($tokenPath)) {
        $accessToken = json_decode(file_get_contents($tokenPath), true);
        $client->setAccessToken($accessToken);
    }

    // If there is no previous token or it's expired.
    if ($client->isAccessTokenExpired()) {
        // Refresh the token if possible, else fetch a new one.
        if ($client->getRefreshToken()) {
            $client->fetchAccessTokenWithRefreshToken($client->getRefreshToken());
        } else {
            // Request authorization from the user.
            $authUrl = $client->createAuthUrl();
            printf("Open the following link in your browser:\n%s\n", $authUrl);
            print 'Enter verification code: ';
            $authCode = trim(fgets(STDIN));

            // Exchange authorization code for an access token.
            $accessToken = $client->fetchAccessTokenWithAuthCode($authCode);
            $client->setAccessToken($accessToken);

            // Check to see if there was an error.
            if (array_key_exists('error', $accessToken)) {
                throw new Exception(join(', ', $accessToken));
            }
        }
        // Save the token to a file.
        if (!file_exists(dirname($tokenPath))) {
            mkdir(dirname($tokenPath), 0700, true);
        }
        file_put_contents($tokenPath, json_encode($client->getAccessToken()));
    }
    return $client;
}


// Get the API client and construct the service object.
$client = getClient();
$service = new Google_Service_Gmail($client);

// Print the labels in the user's account.
$user = 'me';
$results = $service->users_labels->listUsersLabels($user);

if (count($results->getLabels()) == 0) {
  print "No labels found.\n";
} else {
  print "Labels:\n";
  foreach ($results->getLabels() as $label) {
    printf("- %s\n", $label->getName());
  }
}

```