Why Google Drive API constantly requests login?

I’m working with google drive ap using Oauth. This works, however every day it ask my user for consent again and waits for me to login to my google account.

Why do I need do this every day?

Is this working as intended, i just want to be sure i’m not doing anything wrong.

Answer

This is because your code has not requested offline access and there for only has an access token stored for credentials.

When you login and consent to your application accessing your data, the auth server returns an access token. This access token gives your application access for one hour and one hour only. That’s why you have to request access everyday.

What you should look into is requesting offline access and storing the refresh token somewhere this will then give your application access to request a new access token every day rather than prompting the user again.

oauthcallback.php

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
require_once __DIR__ . '/Oauth2Authentication.php';

// Start a session to persist credentials.
session_start();

// Handle authorization flow from the server.
if (! isset($_GET['code'])) {
    $client = buildClient();
    $auth_url = $client->createAuthUrl();
    header('Location: ' . filter_var($auth_url, FILTER_SANITIZE_URL));
} else {
    $client = buildClient();
    $client->authenticate($_GET['code']); // Exchange the authencation code for a refresh token and access token.
    // Add access token and refresh token to seession.
    $_SESSION['access_token'] = $client->getAccessToken();
    $_SESSION['refresh_token'] = $client->getRefreshToken();    
    //Redirect back to main script
    $redirect_uri = str_replace("oauth2callback.php",$_SESSION['mainScript'],$client->getRedirectUri());    
    header('Location: ' . filter_var($redirect_uri, FILTER_SANITIZE_URL));
}

?>

Oauth2Authentication.php

There is more to this then the code i have posted please check the link to the full version on git.

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
/**
 * Gets the Google client refreshing auth if needed.
 * Documentation: https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2
 * Initializes a client object.
 * @return A google client object.
 */
function getGoogleClient() {
    $client = getOauth2Client();

    // Refresh the token if it's expired.
    if ($client->isAccessTokenExpired()) {
        $client->fetchAccessTokenWithRefreshToken($client->getRefreshToken());
        file_put_contents($credentialsPath, json_encode($client->getAccessToken()));
    }
return $client;
}

/**
 * Builds the Google client object.
 * Documentation: https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2
 * Scopes will need to be changed depending upon the API's being accessed.
 * Example:  array(Google_Service_Analytics::ANALYTICS_READONLY, Google_Service_Analytics::ANALYTICS)
 * List of Google Scopes: https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/googlescopes
 * @return A google client object.
 */
function buildClient(){
    
    $client = new Google_Client();
    $client->setAccessType("offline");        // offline access.  Will result in a refresh token
    $client->setIncludeGrantedScopes(true);   // incremental auth
    $client->setAuthConfig(__DIR__ . '/client_secrets.json');
    $client->addScope([YOUR SCOPES HERE]);
    $client->setRedirectUri(getRedirectUri());  
    return $client;
}