Basic usage

The basic usage of the client library is as follows:

// Initialize a GoogleAdsConfig class.
GoogleAdsConfig config = new GoogleAdsConfig()
{
    DeveloperToken = "******",
    OAuth2Mode = OAuth2Flow.SERVICE_ACCOUNT,
    OAuth2SecretsJsonPath = "PATH_TO_CREDENTIALS_JSON",
    LoginCustomerId = ******
};

// Initialize a GoogleAdsClient class.
GoogleAdsClient client = new GoogleAdsClient(config);

// Create the required service.
CampaignServiceClient campaignService =
    client.GetService(Services.V21.CampaignService);

// Make more calls to service class.

Create a GoogleAdsClient instance

The most important classes in the Google Ads API .NET library is the GoogleAdsClient class. It lets you create a pre-configured service class that can be used for making API calls. To configure a GoogleAdsClient object, you need to create a GoogleAdsConfig object and set the necessary settings. Refer to the Configuration guide to learn more.

// Initialize a GoogleAdsConfig class.
GoogleAdsConfig config = new GoogleAdsConfig()
{
    DeveloperToken = "******",
    OAuth2Mode = OAuth2Flow.SERVICE_ACCOUNT,
    OAuth2SecretsJsonPath = "PATH_TO_CREDENTIALS_JSON",
    LoginCustomerId = ******
};

// Initialize a GoogleAdsClient class.
GoogleAdsClient client = new GoogleAdsClient(config);

// Modify the GoogleAdsClient afterwards.

client.Config.LoginCustomerId = ******;

Create a service

GoogleAdsClient provides a GetService method that can be used to create an Ads service.

CampaignServiceClient campaignService = client.GetService(
    Services.V21.CampaignService);
// Now make calls to CampaignService.

We provide a Services class that enumerates all the supported API versions and services. The GetService method accepts these enumeration objects as argument when creating the service. For example, to create an instance of CampaignServiceClient for version V21 of the Google Ads API, you need to call the GoogleAdsClient.GetService method with Services.V21.CampaignService as the argument, as shown in the previous example.

Error handling

Not every API call will succeed. The server can throw errors if your API calls fail for some reason. It is important to capture API errors and handle them appropriately.

A GoogleAdsException instance is thrown when an API error occurs. It has details to help you figure out what went wrong:

public void Run(GoogleAdsClient client, long customerId)
{
    // Get the GoogleAdsService.
    GoogleAdsServiceClient googleAdsService = client.GetService(
        Services.V21.GoogleAdsService);

    // Create a query that will retrieve all campaigns.
    string query = @"SELECT
                    campaign.id,
                    campaign.name,
                    campaign.network_settings.target_content_network
                FROM campaign
                ORDER BY campaign.id";

    try
    {
        // Issue a search request.
        googleAdsService.SearchStream(customerId.ToString(), query,
            delegate (SearchGoogleAdsStreamResponse resp)
            {
                foreach (GoogleAdsRow googleAdsRow in resp.Results)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("Campaign with ID {0} and name '{1}' was found.",
                        googleAdsRow.Campaign.Id, googleAdsRow.Campaign.Name);
                }
            }
        );
    }
    catch (GoogleAdsException e)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Failure:");
        Console.WriteLine($"Message: {e.Message}");
        Console.WriteLine($"Failure: {e.Failure}");
        Console.WriteLine($"Request ID: {e.RequestId}");
        throw;
    }
}
GetCampaigns.cs
      

Thread safety

It is not safe to share a GoogleAdsClient instance between multiple threads, since the configuration changes you make on an instance in one thread might affect the services you create on other threads. Operations like obtaining new service instances from a GoogleAdsClient instance and making calls to multiple services in parallel are thread-safe.

A multithreaded application would look something like this:

GoogleAdsClient client1 = new GoogleAdsClient();
GoogleAdsClient client2 = new GoogleAdsClient();

Thread userThread1 = new Thread(addAdGroups);
Thread userThread2 = new Thread(addAdGroups);

userThread1.start(client1);
userThread2.start(client2);

userThread1.join();
userThread2.join();

public void addAdGroups(object data) {
  GoogleAdsClient client = (GoogleAdsClient) data;
  // Do more operations here.
  ...
}

Keep your application responsive

The Google Ads API API method calls may take a while to complete, depending on how big the requests are. To keep your application responsive, we recommend the following steps:

Use the Grpc.Core library

If you are developing an application that targets .NET Framework and uses a legacy technology such as ASP.NET Web Forms or WinForms application, we recommend using the legacy Grpc.Core library as follows:

   GoogleAdsConfig config = new GoogleAdsConfig();
   config.UseGrpcCore = true;
   GoogleAdsClient client = new GoogleAdsClient(config);
   ```

### Use the asynchronous methods {: #asynchronous}

You can use asynchronous methods to keep your application responsive. Here are a
couple of examples.

#### Retrieve the list of campaigns, and populate a `ListView`

```c#
private async void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // Get the GoogleAdsService.
    GoogleAdsServiceClient googleAdsService = client.GetService(
        Services.V21.GoogleAdsService);

    // Create a query that will retrieve all campaigns.
    string query = @"SELECT
                    campaign.id,
                    campaign.name,
                    campaign.network_settings.target_content_network
                FROM campaign
                ORDER BY campaign.id";

    List<ListViewItem> items = new List<ListViewItem>();
    Task t =  googleAdsService.SearchStreamAsync(customerId.ToString(), query,
        delegate (SearchGoogleAdsStreamResponse resp)
        {
            foreach (GoogleAdsRow googleAdsRow in resp.Results)
            {
                ListViewItem item = new ListViewItem();
                item.Text = googleAdsRow.Campaign.Id.ToString();
                item.SubItems.Add(googleAdsRow.Campaign.Name);
                items.Add(item);
            }
        }
    );
    await t;
    listView1.Items.AddRange(items.ToArray());
}
```

#### Update a campaign budget and display a Message box alert

```c#
private async void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // Get the BudgetService.
    CampaignBudgetServiceClient budgetService = client.GetService(
        Services.V21.CampaignBudgetService);

    // Create the campaign budget.
    CampaignBudget budget = new CampaignBudget()
    {
        Name = "Interplanetary Cruise Budget #" + ExampleUtilities.GetRandomString(),
        DeliveryMethod = BudgetDeliveryMethod.Standard,
        AmountMicros = 500000
    };

    // Create the operation.
    CampaignBudgetOperation budgetOperation = new CampaignBudgetOperation()
    {
        Create = budget
    };

    // Create the campaign budget.
    Task<MutateCampaignBudgetsResponse> t = budgetService.MutateCampaignBudgetsAsync(
        customerId.ToString(), new CampaignBudgetOperation[] { budgetOperation });

    await t;
    MutateCampaignBudgetsResponse response = t.Result;
    MessageBox.Show(response.Results[0].ResourceName);
}
```