Accessing Gapi on an Ionic (Cordova) app with cordova-plugin-googleplus

[JilReg]

Hey @TMSCH,

I have read all your posts in #401, in #304 and in #360. Sadly I'm still did not figure out how to solve my problem (accessing Google APIs trough Gapi on a Cordova device after restarting the app.)

I would appreciate every helping advice! 🤗

What I would like to achieve

1.) I would like to let users sign in with Google account into an Ionic / Cordova app running on iOS and on Android via Firebase. 2.) I would like afterwards to access the users emails in Gmail via Gapi. And being able to do so after closing and opening the app.

What I have achieved

• I've used the cordova-plugin-googleplus and AngularFireAuth to achieve 1.)

export class GoogleLoginComponent implements OnInit {
  user: Observable<firebase.User>;
  private course: any;

  constructor(
    private afAuth: AngularFireAuth,
    private gplus: GooglePlus,
    private platform: Platform
  ) {
    this.user = this.afAuth.authState;
    this.initGapiClient();
  }

  async nativeGoogleLogin(): Promise<firebase.auth.UserCredential> {
    try {
      const gplusUser = await this.gplus.login({
        webClientId: firebaseConfig.clientId,
        offline: true,
        scopes:
          'profile ' +
          'email ' +
          'https://mail.google.com/ ' +
          'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.modify ' +
          'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.readonly'
      });

      return await this.afAuth.auth.signInWithCredential(
        firebase.auth.GoogleAuthProvider.credential(gplusUser.idToken)
      );
    } catch (err) {
      console.log(err);
    }
  }

  async getGmailMessagesList() {
    const messages = await gapi.client.gmail.users.messages.list({
      userId: 'me'
    });

}

• I'm more or less able to solve 2.), but it only works straight after the user login and does not work after closing and opening the app (even though the user is still signed in). I'm able to do so by adding the following:

To constructor([...]):

      gapi.load('client');

To nativeGoogleLogin():

      gapi.client.setToken({ access_token: gplusUser.accessToken });
      gapi.client.load('gmail', 'v1');

What I figured out / think

• If save the gplusUser.accessToken and provide it to gapi.client.setToken after closing and opening the app, I'm able to access the Google APIs, but from what I understand the token will expire after some time and then I would have the same problem as before.
• From what I've read here the access_token is not meant to do the authentication for Gapi and I think the authentication is what I need to be able to close and open the app and still have access to the APIs.

[yuzhakovvv]

@JilReg did you manage to run it on Cordova?

In Google Cloud Console for used Client ID it's required to whitelist Origins from where requests will come. But Cordova can set only localhost:8080 Origin which is not acceptable for Google as far as I know when they verify you app

[yuzhakovvv]

Actually I can use Google API CORS to resolve my question above