Introducing the Google Command Line Tool ☀

Google has taken yet another bold step in opening up their services with GoogleCL.

GoogleCL is a command-line utility that provides access to various Google services. It streamlines tasks such as posting to a Blogger blog, adding events to Calendar, or editing documents on Google Docs.

Not quite sure if GoogleCL streamlines Google services for the novice user, but it certainly brings significant advantages to the intermediate and advanced folks.

Here are some example scripts from Google Code:

Blogger

  • google blogger post --tags "GoogleCL, awesome" --title "Test Post" "I'm posting from the command line"
  • google blogger post blogpost.txt
  • google blogger list title,url-site # List posts
  • google blogger delete --title "Test Post"
  • google delete --title "Silly post number [0-9]*" # Delete posts matching regex
  • google tag --title "Dev post" --tags "Python, software" # label an existing post

Calendar

  • google calendar add "Dinner party with George today at 6pm" # add event to calendar
  • google calendar today # List events for today only.
  • google calendar list --date 2010-06-01,2010-06-30 # List events.
  • google calendar delete --title "Dinner party with George" # Delete an event.

Contacts

  • google contacts add "J. Random Hacker, jrandom@example.com"
  • google contacts list name,email --title "J. Random Hacker"
  • google contacts delete --title "J. Random Hacker"

Docs

  • google docs delete --title "Evidence"
  • google docs list title,url-direct --delimiter ": " # list docs
  • google docs upload the_bobs.csv ~/work/docs_to_share/*

gdata-python-client >= 1.3.0 ONLY

  • google docs edit --title "Shopping list" --editor vim
  • google docs get --title "Homework [0-9]*"

Picasa

  • google picasa create --title "Vermont Test" --tags Vermont vermont.jpg
  • google picasa get --title "Vermont Test" /path/to/download/folder
  • google picasa list title,url-direct --query "A tag"
  • google picasa post --title "Vermont Test" ~/old_photos/*.jpg # Add to an album
  • google picasa tag --title "Vermont Test" --tags "places"
  • google picasa delete --title "Vermont Test" # delete entire album

Youtube

  • google youtube post --category Education --devtags GoogleCL killer_robots.avi
  • google youtube delete --title "killer_robots.avi"
  • google youtube list # list my videos
  • google youtube tag -n ".*robot.*" --tags robot

The great thing about GoogleCL is it’s raw access to Google services without having to use a web interface. This new capability also presents cloud computing opportunities for the individual as well as IT staff and potentially, for the corporate environment.