I’m currently building a website called EduInsights for my college to manage the semester results. I want access to the drive and sheets API provided by Google to export the results to a spreadsheet and also to extract results from PDFs in a drive folder. In the GCP console I’ve created the credentials and downloaded it as a .json file. When I authorise my application the first time and generate the token in a token.json file, after few days the token gets expired and I have to delete the file and re-authtorise.

I want a solution such that once I authorize and get the token, I don’t want it to expire. Especially because I’ve dockerised the application and I don’t want the complexity of redirecting to the authorisation link from the docker to my user as the application will use exactly one and the same google account for the APIs. I’ve provided the code for authenticate.py file I’m using to authenticate.

import os

from dotenv import load_dotenv
from google.auth.transport.requests import Request
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from google_auth_oauthlib.flow import InstalledAppFlow
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from googleapiclient.errors import HttpError

# Get the absolute path to the directory containing this Python script (alembic folder)
current_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
print(f"Current directory: {current_dir}", flush=True)

# Get the absolute path to the project root directory (two levels up from the current directory)
project_root = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(current_dir, ".", ".."))
print(f"Project root directory: {project_root}", flush=True)

# Load environment variables from the .env file located in the project root directory
dotenv_path = os.path.join(project_root, ".env")
print(f"Loading environment variables from: {dotenv_path}", flush=True)
load_dotenv(dotenv_path)

# defining credentials file path from environment variable
credentials_file_path = os.getenv("GOOGLE_API_CREDENTIALS")

# defining scopes for drive and sheets API
SCOPES = [
    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets",
    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive",
]


# authenticate drive API
def driveAPI(SCOPES):
    """
    Authenticate with Google Drive API.

    Parameters:
        SCOPES (list): A list of OAuth 2.0 scopes defining the level of access to Google Drive resources.

    Returns:
        Resource: An authenticated Google Drive service object.

    Raises:
        HttpError: An error occurred while attempting to authenticate or build the service.
    """
    credentials = None

    # Check if token file exists
    if os.path.exists("token.json"):
        credentials = Credentials.from_authorized_user_file("token.json", scopes=SCOPES)

    # If credentials are not valid or do not exist, perform authentication
    if not credentials or not credentials.valid:
        if credentials and credentials.expired and credentials.refresh_token:
            # Refresh the expired credentials
            credentials.refresh(Request())
        else:
            # Perform OAuth 2.0 authentication
            flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(
                credentials_file_path, SCOPES
            )
            credentials = flow.run_local_server(port=0)

        # Save the refreshed or newly acquired credentials to token file
        with open("token.json", "w") as token:
            token.write(credentials.to_json())

    try:
        # Build the Google Drive service
        drive_service = build("drive", "v3", credentials=credentials)

        return drive_service
    except HttpError as error:
        # Handle any HTTP errors
        print(error)


# Authenticate sheets API
def sheetsAPI(SCOPES):
    """
    Authenticate with Google Sheets API.

    Parameters:
        SCOPES (list): A list of OAuth 2.0 scopes defining the level of access to Google Sheets resources.

    Returns:
        Resource: An authenticated Google Sheets service object.

    Raises:
        HttpError: An error occurred while attempting to authenticate or build the service.
    """
    credentials = None

    # Check if token file exists
    if os.path.exists("token.json"):
        credentials = Credentials.from_authorized_user_file("token.json", scopes=SCOPES)

    # If credentials are not valid or do not exist, perform authentication
    if not credentials or not credentials.valid:
        if credentials and credentials.expired and credentials.refresh_token:
            # Refresh the expired credentials
            credentials.refresh(Request())
        else:
            # Perform OAuth 2.0 authentication
            flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(
                credentials_file_path, SCOPES
            )
            credentials = flow.run_local_server(port=0)

        # Save the refreshed or newly acquired credentials to token file
        with open("token.json", "w") as token:
            token.write(credentials.to_json())

    try:
        # Build the Google Sheets service
        sheets_service = build("sheets", "v4", credentials=credentials)

        return sheets_service
    except HttpError as error:
        # Handle any HTTP errors
        print(error)

I’ve tried the above code and also looked for options to change the expiration in the GCP console but I never found it.