Batch processing Google Contact Groups with API (php) - batch-processing

Question

I'm trying to do batch processing of Google Contact groups. I have batch processing working for the actual contacts, but groups are not behaving. The XML that I send to Google is:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'
xmlns:gContact='http://schemas.google.com/contact/2008'
xmlns:gd='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005'
xmlns:batch='http://schemas.google.com/gdata/batch'>
<entry>
<batch:id>create</batch:id>
<batch:operation type='insert'/>
<category scheme='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind'
term='http://schemas.google.com/contact/2008#group'/>
<title type='text'>Status:Followup 1</title>
<content type='text'>Status:Followup 1</content>
</entry>
</feed>
The response I got back from google was:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
xmlns:batch="http://schemas.google.com/gdata/batch"
xmlns:gContact="http://schemas.google.com/contact/2008"
xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005">
<id>https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/awallace%40ihouseweb.com/full/batch/1430425819721000</id>
<updated>2015-04-30T20:30:19.721Z</updated>
<title type="text">Batch Feed</title>
<entry gd:etag=""SHs-ezVSLit7I2A9XRVTFE8PTwU."">
<batch:id>create</batch:id>
<batch:operation type="insert"/>
<batch:status code="201" reason="Created."/>
<id>http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/awallace%40ihouseweb.com/base/4b9f4f69095d670d</id>
<updated>2015-04-30T20:30:19.553Z</updated>
<app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2015-04-30T20:30:19.553Z</app:edited>
<category scheme="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind" term="http://schemas.google.com/contact/2008#contact"/>
<title/>
<content>Status:Followup 1</content>
<link rel="http://schemas.google.com/contacts/2008/rel#photo" type="image/*"
href="https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/photos/media/awallace%40ihouseweb.com/4b9f4f69095d670d"/>
<link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/awallace%40ihouseweb.com/full/4b9f4f69095d670d"/>
<link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"
href="https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/awallace%40ihouseweb.com/full/4b9f4f69095d670d"/>
</entry>
</feed>
(note, there were actually 4 groups in my batch, but the results were identical).
The groups in my account were unchanged. I have successfully added and deleted groups one at a time (without the batch syntax/url). The result XML here says explicitly that the group was created (), but the title element is empty in the return. ()
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Andy

Answer 1

I had a similar problem when batch creating groups. My problem was I had no entry for gd:extendedProperty:
eg:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<feed xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:gContact="http://schemas.google.com/contact/2008" xmlns:batch="http://schemas.google.com/gdata/batch">
<entry>
<batch:id>create</batch:id>
<batch:operation type="insert"/>
<atom:category scheme="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind" term="http://schemas.google.com/contact/2008#group"/>
<atom:title type="text">Test 1</atom:title>
<gd:extendedProperty name="Test 1">
<info>Test 1</info>
</gd:extendedProperty>
</entry>
...
</feed>
The XML markup you have appears to be for updating an existing group. Have a look at the documentation for more info:
https://developers.google.com/google-apps/contacts/v3/#batch_operations_for_contact_groups