Google Calendar API PHP | GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS: file xxx.json does not exist

I’m pretty new at this but I’ve been trying to use the google calendar API to show upcoming events on a website I’m making. So far I’ve enabled the API and created a service account to access the calendar. I’ve been using the instructions from another stackoverflow post but I keep getting an error. I believe this is the code that is causing it:

//set environment variable to use your downloaded Service account key
putenv("GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=myCredentials.json");

I have myCredentials.json in the same folder as the php file containing the above code. However when I test the code i get the following error:

Fatal error: Uncaught DomainException: Unable to read the credential file specified by  GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS: file myCredentials.json does not exist

I’m not sure if I should be placing myCredentials.json in a different location or did I not specify the path correctly?

Update: I fixed it by using an absolute path. In my case I just had to prepend /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ since I was using MAMP.

Answer

You should specify the full path to the .json file when setting it as an environment variable.

You can verify that this is the problem by using getenv() function. You will notice the file is not found, but when you specify the absolute path it will find the file.