Export all available metrics and dimensions along with a return type and a short description of the metric

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Name of API affected:
Analytics Data Export API

Request summary:
It would be nice to be able to export all available metrics and dimensions, as 
this is not account specific user wouldn't need even to log into the api. 

The resulting feed would look something like this:

totalResults: the total number of metrics and dimensions
totalMetrics: The total number of available metrics
totalDimensions: The total number of available Dimensions
totalCalculatedMetrics: The total number of calculated metrics
entries:
    title: Printable metric name
    internalName: Name used internally by the api including Namespace
    description: Short Description of the metric
    docUri: Uri linking to a page better describing the metric on code.google.com
    is_metric: true or false if it's a metric or not
    is_dimension: true or false if it's a dimension or not
    is_calculated: true or false if it's a calculated metric or not
    calculatedFormula: Printable formula for calculated metric if it applies
    returnType: either String, Integer, Decimal or Date
    doesntPlayWell: list of metrics or dimensions that don't play well with this one

An extra would be the ability to check if a metric doesn't form a valid 
combination with another metric or dimension. I added the doesnPlayWell attr to 
every entry, but I'm not sure if it's the best approach. The current Dimensions 
and metrics page has the ability to do so but this logic is not exposed on the 
API. Maybe it would be better to just return errors if invalid combinations are 
queried.

Use Cases:
The API just got extra 120+ metrics and dimensions this past week. We have an 
exportation tools and had to manually update it with every new metric and 
dimension. It would be nice to introspect the API and find out everything about 
this available metrics and dimensions so our code can be auto updated next time.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by eduardocereto on 27 Jan 2011 at 1:13

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Here's the current Dimensions and metric page that let me check for valid 
combinations.
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/gdataReferenceDimensionsMetrics
.html

Original comment by eduardocereto on 27 Jan 2011 at 1:14

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I too think this would be a nice feature. I would imagine a large number of 
programmers utilizing the API have at some point manually parse and created 
their own database of metrics and dimensions.

Original comment by marksche...@yahoo.com on 8 Apr 2011 at 11:31

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Removing an obsolete label that was used when these issues were in the 
gdata-issues project.

Original comment by jrobbins@google.com on 21 Jul 2011 at 10:04

• Removed labels: API-Analytics

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Changing the issue type to match the organization desired in this project.

Original comment by jrobbins@google.com on 21 Jul 2011 at 10:06

• Added labels: Type-Feature

[GoogleCodeExporter]

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/metadata/v3/

Original comment by pfrise...@google.com on 7 Sep 2013 at 12:36

• Changed state: Fixed