avoid auth token to expire

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Florens Wartenberg

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May 30, 2022, 5:22:02 PM5/30/22

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I want to use the gmail api to update myself about the status of a programm I'm running locally 24/7. Basicly once a day it should send me a status report per email from the emailaccount I created just for this case to the same account.

I've got a project set up, the api enabled, got my credentials and created a token.json file. I managed to have it send me emails yada yada yada.

I concentrated on the further development of the programm for some time and then wanted to jump back to this to test out another feature where I wanted to implement a ping me feature. I'd send myself an email asking for a ping back just to check if my program is still running.

While doing that I noticed that my token expired. I tried reading into what I can do about that. Ideally I'd like to have the program just run autonomously. I read for my case that a service account would be ideal but after setting that all up and 2 hours later after a lot of errors I read that interacting with the gmail api with a service account is only open to workspace users since I can't delegate domain-wide authority without one.

So after some further reading I read that next to the access token I created I can refresh that token with refresh tokens. for that I was trying the request function noted in the quickstart tutorial:

if os.path.exists('token.json'):

creds = Credentials.from_authorized_user_file('token.json', SCOPES)

if not creds or not creds.valid: if creds and creds.expired and creds.refresh_token: creds.refresh(Request())

now running creds.refresh(Request()) I get this error:

google.auth.exceptions.RefreshError: ('invalid_grant: Token has been expired or revoked.', {'error': 'invalid_grant', 'error_description': 'Token has been expired or revoked.'})

Upon further reading here I read that refesh tokens are only available to projects whose status is set to in progress and not in testing. Projects set to testing are required to have the user manually log in at least once a week which I don't want.

Now for me verifying my project doesn't make sense since I won't have any other users using my access to the gmail api and frankly I wouldn't want that either.

What are my options here to have the script running continuously without having to manually sign in once a week? Considering also that I will be at all times the only user.