[krakout]

Count me in if you need more testers!!

[dmdsoftware]

I've dug and dug, looking for some way around collecting the album information without the now-broken Picasa API, and there is no way without emulating the browser or app. That is typically the last resort one wants to make, but it is still doable.

For dealing with shared albums, I did think of a clever workaround that I want to know if there is any interest in. It is possible to have the recipient create dummy folders in their Google Photos portion in Google Drive. Google Drive won't understand what purpose they are for, but I can have the KODI app interpret them. It would allow folks an easy way to load albums that are shared with them in a very quick turnaround (as in 1 day of effort to implement into code).

Thoughts?

[sabrex]

@dmdsoftware ... I'm curious. Since the only public APIs available seems to be for PicasaWeb and Google Drive, are you thinking of fixing the issues with the existing PicasaWeb add-on, adding the albums functionality to your gdrive add-on, or creating a Google Photos add-on from scratch?

I haven't been able to use the PicasaWeb add-on properly after installing it and associating my google account, likely due to the changes in API starting May 2016. It installs and associates the Google account easily enough, but the search and browse functions simply don't work.

[dmdsoftware]

@dmdsoftware ... I'm curious. Since the only public APIs available seems to be for PicasaWeb and Google Drive, are you thinking of fixing the issues with the existing PicasaWeb add-on, adding the albums functionality to your gdrive add-on, or creating a Google Photos add-on from scratch?

I haven't been able to use the PicasaWeb add-on properly after installing it and associating my google account, likely due to the changes in API starting May 2016. It installs and associates the Google account easily enough, but the search and browse functions simply don't work.

Since for about 2 years ago, my plugins adopt a CloudService API. Although they all reside independently still, if they all work the same, eventually they'll all plug in together. That is my eventual goal is to have a single plugin and you select the cloud service(s) that you want to enlist. This way it is a unified experience across whichever supplies the cloud service (Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Drive, Box, MediaFire, OneDrive, BOX, etc). Whether this Google Photos plugin will take the form of a dedicated plugin or start out in Google Drive or CloudStream, I'll be implementing it using the same framework that I use for the other plugins. The goal here is when someone comes up with a good idea for a feature they want, when it gets implemented, if it applies to other services, it'll be made available with minimum effort.

Anyways.... to get albums working, it is possible to get limp by with the Google Drive plugin with some hacks to get albums linked. My focus will be on improving photo support and giving people a way to load albums on their KODI. There is a search already implemented in my plugin, but it is not what you would expect, and it wouldn't match against photos if you were searching for photo characteristics (like location). But now there is a API3 for Google Drive, and with the additional photo elements, it may be possible to workaround this as well, and implement a search that would only search across your photos, and may be able to accomplish the same as Google Photos app.

After all the research I've been doing into Google Photos and what direction Google is taking, I don't believe they will ever release a replacement for Picasa API. They updated the Google Drive API this year to v3, and the major differences is leveraging more of the photo elements that wasn't available in Google Drive prior. They even reference "albums" in the API spec but that is it... a single reference, no explanation or detail on how to load them.

The intention in May is clear from communication from Google that those who have already setup a OAUTH2 token will be able to continue to use it until it expires, but they don't want anyone developing new apps on the API, and they are not allowing users to log into apps if they haven't already.

To get an KODI app that does everything Google Photo does will take time since you have to emulate the web app rather then implement an open API. Until all that work can be accomplished, the intermediate would be to update the Google Drive plugin with hacks to get people the albums and search support.

[sabrex]

After all the research I've been doing into Google Photos and what direction Google is taking, I don't believe they will ever release a replacement for Picasa API. They updated the Google Drive API this year to v3, and the major differences is leveraging more of the photo elements that wasn't available in Google Drive prior. They even reference "albums" in the API spec but that is it... a single reference, no explanation or detail on how to load them.

The intention in May is clear from communication from Google that those who have already setup a OAUTH2 token will be able to continue to use it until it expires, but they don't want anyone developing new apps on the API, and they are not allowing users to log into apps if they haven't already.

To get an KODI app that does everything Google Photo does will take time since you have to emulate the web app rather then implement an open API. Until all that work can be accomplished, the intermediate would be to update the Google Drive plugin with hacks to get people the albums and search support.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. It explains my own experience with ruuk's PicasaWeb add-on perfectly. I have to say that with the update to your gdrive-testing add-on to 0.8.x, the ability to browser personal videos and photos from Google Photos is fast and very reliable! If you can somehow show content in personal or shared albums as well, that would be amazing. It certainly sounds like you have some ideas on making this happen. I would be OK personally with creating an "Albums" folder in my Google Photos folder from gdrive, and then creating dummy folders in there matching the names of the Google Photos albums I'd like to access. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

One interesting thing to note is that even picasaweb.google.com doesn't currently show all of the albums that were defined in Google Photos. Either that, or it takes a few days for a new album created in Google Photos to show up on PicasaWeb. This may mean that PicasaWeb API, even if you managed to use it, may not be able to give reliable access to Google Photos albums.

The Google Drive v3 API will hopefully be able to give access to Google Photos albums in a reliable way. Best of luck

[ruuk]

Just wanted to mention that I marked this topic as deprecated. I'm not trying to discourage discussion here, but I do want the status to be clear. I'll also be marking the addon as broken in the repository.

[sasadangelo]

Hi,

Excuse me if I reopen the thread on a deprecated plugin.
I just forked the PicasaWeb Addon, removed the broken tag from addon.xml and installed it on my KODI that I have on my Raspberry + OSMC.
My goal was to debug possible issues to find solutions but I am able to login, see my albums and also watch photos.
I manage my photo through Google Photos and I know it uses PicasaWeb Developer API 3.
The only things I noticed that the showing is a little bit slow and I noticed no images are cached under <home>/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/plugin.image.picasa/cache.
Another thing I noticed in the code is that it uses API 1.

Can someone explain to me what is the real issue on this addon and why it has been declared deprecated even if it seems to work properly?

How I can activate cache so that the images are downloaded locally and speed up the display/slideshow?

PS
So far I checked log and everything was fine.

PS2
I am also able to see my recents albums

[sasadangelo]

Hi,

I investigate a bit on Picasa Web Album API 3 and my understanding is that not all API are deprecated. According to FAQ:
https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/faq

There was an announcement posted on February 12, 2016 stating that the work to retire Picasa would begin on May 1, 2016. As part of that work, Picasa Web Albums will be deprecated. However, the Picasa Web Albums Data API will continue to work with some changes. These changes are detailed in the release notes of the new version of the API.

In the release notes I read:

On February 12, 2016 we announced that Picasa Web Albums and the Picasa desktop application would be retired. As part of that announcement, there were also changes to the Picasa Web Albums Data API. Specifically, the API would no longer support the following functionality:

• Flash support
  
  
• Community search
  
  
• Mutation operations other than uploads
  
  
• All support for tags, comments, contacts, and featured photos
  

So basically it's still possible see albums, photos stream, photos in albums, upload image and download image. Tags are not supported but this is not a drama.
The only thing probably that cannot be done (and the plugin does not use it) is to update a photo and is useful when you have a synchronize thread that keep remote photos in sync with a local folder a feature that I would like to have.

However, here the main issue seems to be that the author is not interested any more in maintaining this code. Hope someone else want to continue this work.

[dmdsoftware]

Hi,

I investigate a bit on Picasa Web Album API 3 and my understanding is that not all API are deprecated. According to FAQ:
https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/faq

There was an announcement posted on February 12, 2016 stating that the work to retire Picasa would begin on May 1, 2016. As part of that work, Picasa Web Albums will be deprecated. However, the Picasa Web Albums Data API will continue to work with some changes. These changes are detailed in the release notes of the new version of the API.

In the release notes I read:

On February 12, 2016 we announced that Picasa Web Albums and the Picasa desktop application would be retired. As part of that announcement, there were also changes to the Picasa Web Albums Data API. Specifically, the API would no longer support the following functionality:

• Flash support
  
  
• Community search
  
  
• Mutation operations other than uploads
  
  
• All support for tags, comments, contacts, and featured photos
  

So basically it's still possible see albums, photos stream, photos in albums, upload image and download image. Tags are not supported but this is not a drama.
The only thing probably that cannot be done (and the plugin does not use it) is to update a photo and is useful when you have a synchronize thread that keep remote photos in sync with a local folder a feature that I would like to have.

However, here the main issue seems to be that the author is not interested any more in maintaining this code. Hope someone else want to continue this work.

If you scroll through the thread you will find the problem that led the plugin to get depreciated was fact that the API stopped allowing people to authenticate.  If you have a token already, it continued to work.  If you were using the API for the first time, then you couldn't get past this entry point of getting authenticated.   Maybe Google finally decided to fix this.

[sasadangelo]

Hi,

I didn't use this plugin before and I do not think I have this token. I simply installed the plugin, I authenticated using the plugin procedure and I was able to see my albums.
It worked on Raspberry + OSMC.
Now I am having problems on Mac because Kodi 17.5 isn't able to parse addon.xml.

[ruuk]

I just want to re-iterate that if anyone want's to do something with this add-on they're welcome. One way or another I don't think this add-on should be continued in it's current form. Picasa is dead, so this really should be re-imagined as a Google Photos add-on, and to be honest, it would be much better if it was re-written from scratch. But if someone just wants to take out the broken bits and use that, that's great too. I have zero interest in doing anything with it myself as I didn't really use Picasa Web and don't use Google Photos, but if someone if someone does want to take it on and has any questions, I'd be happy to help if I can.

[dmdsoftware]

Google made available a Google Photos API in June 2018.  I'm going to play around with it.  It is apparently now possible to download and view photos stored in Google Photos, among a slew of other features.  I just care about getting photos into Google Photos, for starters, as there are no existing linux tools to do such.  I relied on using the Picasa API for uploading, which was limited (restricted file upload size) and was error prone and simply completely dead recently.

[petpunk]

Great news!!!

[beeswax]

Google made available a Google Photos API in June 2018.  I'm going to play around with it.

Awesome! Thanks for providing a ray of hope for all us Google Photos users. Have you made any interesting findings so far?

[beeswax]

Is this good news?

https://www.xda-developers.com/google-ph...available/