Observe meeting events with Python and the Google Meet REST API

This tutorial shows how to use the Google Meet REST API along with the Google Workspace Events API and Google Cloud Pub/Sub to observe and react to meeting events. The sample application records when conferences start and end, when participants join or leave, and when any generated meeting artifacts are available.

To learn more about working with events, see Subscribe to Google Meet events in the Google Workspace Events API documentation.

Prerequisites

If you need any of these prerequisites turned on for your organization, ask your Google Workspace administrator to turn them on:

• A Google Workspace account with access to Google Meet.
• Access to create a Google Cloud project.
• Python 3 installed.
• The gcloud CLI installed.

Prepare your environment

This section shows how to create and configure your local environment and the Google Cloud project for this tutorial.

Create a working directory and Python virtual environment

To create and activate a new virtual environment, run the following commands in your terminal.

Linux/macOS

mkdir meet-tutorial
cd meet-tutorial
python3 -mvenv env
source env/bin/activate

Windows (command prompt)

mkdir meet-tutorial
cd meet-tutorial
python3 -mvenv env
env/bin/activate.bat

Windows (PowerShell)

mkdir meet-tutorial
cd meet-tutorial
python3 -mvenv env
env/bin/activate.ps1

Create a Google Cloud project

Google Cloud console

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Menu > IAM & Admin > Create a Project.

   Go to Create a Project

2. In the Project Name field, enter a descriptive name for your project.

   Optional: To edit the Project ID, click Edit. The project ID can't be changed after the project is created, so choose an ID that meets your needs for the lifetime of the project.

3. In the Location field, click Browse to display potential locations for your project. Then, click Select.
4. Click Create. The Google Cloud console navigates to the Dashboard page and your project is created within a few minutes.

gcloud CLI

In one of the following development environments, access the Google Cloud CLI (`gcloud`):

• Cloud Shell: To use an online terminal with the gcloud CLI already set up, activate Cloud Shell.
  Activate Cloud Shell
• Local Shell: To use a local development environment, install and initialize the gcloud CLI.
  To create a Cloud project, use the `gcloud projects create`command:

  gcloud projects create PROJECT_ID

  Replace PROJECT_ID by setting the ID for the project you want to create.

Enable billing for the Google Cloud project

If you're unable to link a billing account, you don't have the permissions needed to make this change. For more information, see Permissions required to enable billing.

Google Cloud console

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Billing. Click Menu > Billing > My Projects.

   Go to Billing for My Projects

2. In Select an organization, choose the organization associated with your Google Cloud project.
3. In the project row, open the Actions menu (), click Change billing, and choose the Cloud Billing account.
4. Click Set account.

gcloud CLI

1. To list available billing accounts, run:

   gcloud billing accounts list

2. Link a billing account with a Google Cloud project:

   gcloud billing projects link PROJECT_ID --billing-account=BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID

   Replace the following:

   • PROJECT_ID is the Project ID for the Cloud project for which you want to enable billing.
   • BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID is the billing account ID to link with the Google Cloud project.

Set up authentication and authorization

Authentication and authorization lets the app access Meet REST API resources. User authorization is required to call the Meet REST API. This section hows you how to configure user credentials and request authorization.

Configure the OAuth consent screen and choose scopes

The following steps suggest placeholder information to configure the OAuth consent screen for your app. Before publishing the app externally, update this information.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Menu > APIs & Services > OAuth consent screen.

   Go to OAuth consent screen

2. Under User type, select Internal, then click Create.
   If unable to create an internal app, select External.
3. In App name, enter Meet REST API Tutorial.
4. Complete the app registration form, then click Save and Continue.
5. Click Add or Remove Scopes. A panel appears with a list of scopes for each API that you've enabled in your Google Cloud project.
6. Under Manually add scopes, paste the following scopes:
   • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/meetings.space.created
7. Click Add to Table.
8. Click Update.
9. After selecting the scopes required by your app, click Save and Continue.
10. If you selected External for user type, add test users:
    1. Under Test users, click Add users.
    2. Enter your email address and any other authorized test users, then click Save and Continue.
11. Review your app registration summary. To make changes, click Edit. If the app registration looks OK, click Back to Dashboard.

Create a client ID

The client ID acts as credentials for your application during the OAuth 2.0 flows. Since the app runs locally, create a desktop client ID.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Menu > APIs & Services > Credentials.

   Go to Credentials

2. Click Create Credentials > OAuth client ID.
3. Click Application type > Desktop app.
4. In the Name field, type a name for the credential. This name is only shown in the Google Cloud console.
5. Click Create. The OAuth client created screen appears, showing your new Client ID and Client secret.
6. Click OK. The newly created credential appears under OAuth 2.0 Client IDs.

Install the Google auth libraries

Install the Google auth libraries:

pip install google-auth google-auth-oauthlib

Execute authorization

The Meet REST API requires user credentials in the form of an OAuth 2.0 access token. In this section, you implement the OAuth 2.0 flow to request an access token and a refresh token for the user.

1. In your working directory, create the file main.py and add the following contents:

   import os
   import json
   
   from google.auth.transport import requests
   from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
   from google_auth_oauthlib.flow import InstalledAppFlow
   
   def authorize() -> Credentials:
       """Ensure valid credentials for calling the Meet REST API."""
       CLIENT_SECRET_FILE = "./client_secret.json"
       credentials = None
   
       if os.path.exists('token.json'):
           credentials = Credentials.from_authorized_user_file('token.json')
   
       if credentials is None:
           flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(
               CLIENT_SECRET_FILE,
               scopes=[
                   'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/meetings.space.created',
               ])
           flow.run_local_server(port=0)
           credentials = flow.credentials
   
       if credentials and credentials.expired:
           credentials.refresh(requests.Request())
   
       if credentials is not None:
           with open("token.json", "w") as f:
               f.write(credentials.to_json())
   
       return credentials
   
   USER_CREDENTIALS = authorize()
   

2. To run the code, both the client ID and the secret created earlier are required. Copy the downloaded client secret file to the project working directory and rename it as client_secret.json.

3. If you'd like to test how authorization works, run the following command. The app prompts for authorization and creates a token.json file in the project working directory after the request is approved.

   python3 main.py
   

Add the Meet REST API

Now that the authorization code is complete, it's time to enable and call the Meet REST API.

Enable the APIs

While this section is focused on the Meet REST API, this tutorial also uses Google Cloud Pub/Sub and Google Workspace Events API.

Google Cloud console

1. In the Google Cloud console, enable the Google Meet REST API, the Google Workspace Events API, and Google Cloud Pub/Sub.

   Enable the APIs

2. Confirm that you're enabling the APIs in the correct Cloud project, then click Next.

3. Confirm that you're enabling the correct APIs, then click Enable.

gcloud CLI

1. If necessary, set the current Cloud project to the one you created with the gcloud config set project command:

   gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
   

   Replace PROJECT_ID with the Project ID of the Cloud project you created.

2. Enable the Google Meet REST API, the Google Workspace Events API, and Google Cloud Pub/Sub with the gcloud services enable command:

   gcloud services enable meet.googleapis.com workspaceevents.googleapis.com pubsub.googleapis.com
   

Install the Meet REST API client library

Follow these steps to install the Meet REST API client library:

1. Run the command:

   pip install google-apps-meet
   

2. Edit the main.py file to import the client:

   from google.apps import meet_v2 as meet
   

Create a space

Now that the Meet REST API is available, define a function to create a meeting space that can be subscribed to.

Edit main.py and add:

def create_space() -> meet.Space:
    """Create a meeting space."""
    client = meet.SpacesServiceClient(credentials=USER_CREDENTIALS)
    request = meet.CreateSpaceRequest()
    return client.create_space(request=request)

Subscribe to events

To receive events about a meeting space, you create a subscription using the Google Workspace Events API. You must also create and subscribe to a Google Cloud Pub/Sub topic which serves as the notification endpoint where your app receives the events.

Configure Google Cloud Pub/Sub

To create and subscribe to a Pub/Sub topic:

Google Cloud console

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Menu > Pub/Sub.

   Go to Pub/Sub

   Make sure that the Cloud project for your app is selected.

2. Click Create topic and do the following:
   1. Enter workspace-events as the topic name.
   2. Leave Add a default subscription selected.
   3. Click Create. Your full topic name is formatted as projects/{project}/topics/{topic}. Make a note of this name for use in later steps.
3. Grant access to publish Pub/Sub messages to your topic:
   1. On the side panel, open the Permissions tab.
   2. Click Add Principal.
   3. In New principals, enter [e-mail].
   4. In Assign roles, select Pub/Sub Publisher.
   5. Click Save.

   It can take a few minutes to update the permissions for your topic.

gcloud CLI

1. In your Cloud project, create a topic by running the following:

   gcloud pubsub topics create workspace-events

   The output displays the full topic name, formatted as projects/{project}/topics/{topic}. Make a note of this name for use in later steps.

2. Grant access to publish messages to your topic:

    gcloud pubsub topics add-iam-policy-binding workspace-events --member='serviceAccount:[e-mail]' --role='roles/pubsub.publisher'

   It can take a few minutes to update the permissions for your topic.

3. Create a Pub/Sub subscription for the topic:

   gcloud pubsub subscriptions create workspace-events-sub --topic=TOPIC_NAME

   Replace the following:

   • TOPIC_NAME: The name of your topic that you created in the previous step.

Make note of the topic name and make sure the value for {project} is the Cloud project ID for your app. You'll use the topic name to create the Google Workspace subscription later.

Create a service account

Google Cloud console

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Menu > IAM & Admin > Service Accounts.

   Go to Service Accounts

2. Click Create service account.
3. Fill in the service account details, then click Create and continue.
   Note: By default, Google creates a unique service account ID. If you would like to change the ID, modify the ID in the service account ID field.
4. Optional: Assign roles to your service account to grant access to your Google Cloud project's resources. For more details, refer to Granting, changing, and revoking access to resources.
5. Click Continue.
6. Optional: Enter users or groups that can manage and perform actions with this service account. For more details, refer to Managing service account impersonation.
7. Click Done. Make a note of the email address for the service account.

gcloud CLI

1. Create the service account:

   gcloud iam service-accounts create meet-event-listener \
     --display-name="meet-event-listener"

2. Optional: Assign roles to your service account to grant access to your Google Cloud project's resources. For more details, refer to Granting, changing, and revoking access to resources.

Use the service account

After creating the service account, grant yourself access to impersonate the service account.

Google Cloud console

1. In the Actions column for the newly created service account, click > Manage permissions.
2. Click Add key > Grant access.
3. Enter your email address under Add principals.
4. Select Service accounts > Service Account Token Creator as the role.
5. Click Save.

gcloud CLI

1. To add the permission, run gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding using the email address of the service account and the user.

   gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding \
     SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL \
     --member="user:YOUR_EMAIL \
     --role="roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator"

2. Sign in with gcloud to set the application default credentials to the service service account. When prompted for authorization, sign in using the same account used in the previous steps.

   gcloud auth application-default login --impersonate-service-account=SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL

Install the Pub/Sub client library

1. Use pip to install the client library for Pub/Sub:

   pip install google-cloud-pubsub
   

2. Then edit main.py to import the client:

   from google.cloud import pubsub_v1
   

Create the Google Workspace subscription

Add the following code to main.py to define a method for subscribing to Meet events. This code subscribes to all events for a meeting space. When subscribed, events are posted to the Pub/Sub topic.

def subscribe_to_space(space_name: str = None, topic_name: str = None):
    """Subscribe to events for a meeting space."""
    session = requests.AuthorizedSession(USER_CREDENTIALS)
    body = {
        'targetResource': f"//meet.googleapis.com/{space_name}",
        "eventTypes": [
            "google.workspace.meet.conference.v2.started",
            "google.workspace.meet.conference.v2.ended",
            "google.workspace.meet.participant.v2.joined",
            "google.workspace.meet.participant.v2.left",
            "google.workspace.meet.recording.v2.fileGenerated",
            "google.workspace.meet.transcript.v2.fileGenerated",
        ],
        "payloadOptions": {
            "includeResource": False,
        },
        "notificationEndpoint": {
            "pubsubTopic": topic_name
        },
        "ttl": "86400s",
    }
    response = session.post("https://workspaceevents.googleapis.com/v1/subscriptions", json=body)
    return response

Next, add the corresponding code to pull and process the events.

Listen for and handle events

Continue to edit main.py and add the following sample code. This code implements the receiving side and uses the Google Cloud Pub/Sub API to pull events as they're made available. The various handler methods print information about the corresponding events.

def format_participant(participant: meet.Participant) -> str:
    """Formats a participant for display on the console."""
    if participant.anonymous_user:
        return f"{participant.anonymous_user.display_name} (Anonymous)"

    if participant.signedin_user:
        return f"{participant.signedin_user.display_name} (ID: {participant.signedin_user.user})"

    if participant.phone_user:
        return f"{participant.phone_user.display_name} (Phone)"

    return "Unknown participant"


def fetch_participant_from_session(session_name: str) -> meet.Participant:
    """Fetches the participant for a session."""
    client = meet.ConferenceRecordsServiceClient(credentials=USER_CREDENTIALS)
    # Use the parent path of the session to fetch the participant details
    parsed_session_path = client.parse_participant_session_path(session_name)
    participant_resource_name = client.participant_path(
        parsed_session_path["conference_record"],
        parsed_session_path["participant"])
    return client.get_participant(name=participant_resource_name)


def on_conference_started(message: pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message):
    """Display information about a conference when started."""
    payload = json.loads(message.data)
    resource_name = payload.get("conferenceRecord").get("name")
    client = meet.ConferenceRecordsServiceClient(credentials=USER_CREDENTIALS)
    conference = client.get_conference_record(name=resource_name)
    print(f"Conference (ID {conference.name}) started at {conference.start_time.rfc3339()}")


def on_conference_ended(message: pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message):
    """Display information about a conference when ended."""
    payload = json.loads(message.data)
    resource_name = payload.get("conferenceRecord").get("name")
    client = meet.ConferenceRecordsServiceClient(credentials=USER_CREDENTIALS)
    conference = client.get_conference_record(name=resource_name)
    print(f"Conference (ID {conference.name}) ended at {conference.end_time.rfc3339()}")


def on_participant_joined(message: pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message):
    """Display information about a participant when they join a meeting."""
    payload = json.loads(message.data)
    resource_name = payload.get("participantSession").get("name")
    client = meet.ConferenceRecordsServiceClient(credentials=USER_CREDENTIALS)
    session = client.get_participant_session(name=resource_name)
    participant = fetch_participant_from_session(resource_name)
    display_name = format_participant(participant)
    print(f"{display_name} joined at {session.start_time.rfc3339()}")


def on_participant_left(message: pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message):
    """Display information about a participant when they leave a meeting."""
    payload = json.loads(message.data)
    resource_name = payload.get("participantSession").get("name")
    client = meet.ConferenceRecordsServiceClient(credentials=USER_CREDENTIALS)
    session = client.get_participant_session(name=resource_name)
    participant = fetch_participant_from_session(resource_name)
    display_name = format_participant(participant)
    print(f"{display_name} left at {session.end_time.rfc3339()}")


def on_recording_ready(message: pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message):
    """Display information about a recorded meeting when artifact is ready."""
    payload = json.loads(message.data)
    resource_name = payload.get("recording").get("name")
    client = meet.ConferenceRecordsServiceClient(credentials=USER_CREDENTIALS)
    recording = client.get_recording(name=resource_name)
    print(f"Recording available at {recording.drive_destination.export_uri}")


def on_transcript_ready(message: pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message):
    """Display information about a meeting transcript when artifact is ready."""
    payload = json.loads(message.data)
    resource_name = payload.get("transcript").get("name")
    client = meet.ConferenceRecordsServiceClient(credentials=USER_CREDENTIALS)
    transcript = client.get_transcript(name=resource_name)
    print(f"Transcript available at {transcript.docs_destination.export_uri}")


def on_message(message: pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message) -> None:
    """Handles an incoming event from the Google Cloud Pub/Sub API."""
    event_type = message.attributes.get("ce-type")
    handler = {
        "google.workspace.meet.conference.v2.started": on_conference_started,
        "google.workspace.meet.conference.v2.ended": on_conference_ended,
        "google.workspace.meet.participant.v2.joined": on_participant_joined,
        "google.workspace.meet.participant.v2.left": on_participant_left,
        "google.workspace.meet.recording.v2.fileGenerated": on_recording_ready,
        "google.workspace.meet.transcript.v2.fileGenerated": on_transcript_ready,
    }.get(event_type)

    try:
        if handler is not None:
            handler(message)
        message.ack()
    except Exception as error:
        print("Unable to process event")
        print(error)


def listen_for_events(subscription_name: str = None):
    """Subscribe to events on the subscription."""
    subscriber = pubsub_v1.SubscriberClient()
    with subscriber:
        future = subscriber.subscribe(subscription_name, callback=on_message)
        print("Listening for events")
        try:
            future.result()
        except KeyboardInterrupt:
            future.cancel()
    print("Done")

Finalize the code

Add the following code to main.py to call the methods to create the space, subscribe to events, and listen. Update the TOPIC_NAME and SUBSCRIPTION_NAME constants with your own topic and subscription names that you previously created.

1. Add the code to main.py:

   space = create_space()
   print(f"Join the meeting at {space.meeting_uri}")
   
   TOPIC_NAME = "projects/PROJECT_ID/topics/TOPIC_ID"
   SUBSCRIPTION_NAME = "projects/PROJECT_ID/subscriptions/SUBSCRIPTION_ID"
   
   subscription = subscribe_to_space(topic_name=TOPIC_NAME, space_name=space.name)
   listen_for_events(subscription_name=SUBSCRIPTION_NAME)
   

   Replace the following:

   • PROJECT_ID: The unique Cloud project ID for your app, such as my-sample-project-191923.

   • TOPIC_ID: The name of the Pub/Sub topic that you created in your Cloud project.

   • SUBSCRIPTION_ID: The name of your subscription, such as workspace-events-sub.

2. Run the program:

   python3 main.py
   

If you haven't previously run the program, it prompts for authorization the first time. Grant access to the application to call the Meet REST API. After the program successfully runs, you should see output similar to:

Join the meeting at https://meet.google.com/abc-mnop-xyz

Join the conference

To generate events for the application, join the conference using the URL displayed by the application. After you join, you can try these actions to trigger events:

• Leave and rejoin the meeting.
• Invite others or dial in with your phone.
• Enable recordings and transcripts.

Each of these activities generates an event that the application receives and logs to the Google Cloud console.

Note: Recordings and transcripts can take several minutes after the meeting ends to generate. Keep the program running after leaving the meeting and wait.

Use ctrl-c to interrupt the program when you're done.

Optional: Additional steps to try

The app logs basic details about the events. To continue exploring the Meet REST API, try modifying the application to perform these additional actions.

• Use the People API to retrieve additional information about signed-in participants.
• Use the Google Drive API to download recordings and transcripts.
• Instead of downloading transcripts from Google Drive, retrieve them using the structured transcript methods in the Meet REST API.

Optional: Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud console account for the resources used in this tutorial, we recommend that you clean up any resources and projects created.

To delete the subscription:

Console

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Menu > Pub/Sub > Subscriptions

   Go to Subscriptions

2. Select the subscription and click More actions.

3. Click Delete. The Delete subscription window appears.

4. Click Delete.

gcloud CLI

1. Delete the subscription:

   gcloud pubsub subscriptions delete SUBSCRIPTION_NAME
   

To delete the topic:

Console

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Menu > Pub/Sub > Topics

   Go to Topics

2. Select the topic and click More actions.

3. Click Delete. The Delete topic window appears.

4. Enter delete and then click Delete.

gcloud CLI

1. Delete the topic:

   gcloud pubsub topics delete TOPIC_NAME
   

To delete the project:

Console

Caution: Deleting a project has the following effects:

• Everything in the project is deleted. If you used an existing project for this tutorial, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.
• Custom project IDs are lost. When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as a URL on appspot.com, delete the selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.

If you plan to explore multiple tutorials and quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid exceeding project quota limits.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Manage resources page. Click Menu > IAM & Admin > Manage Resources.

   Go to Resource Manager

2. In the project list, select the project you want to delete and then click Delete .
3. In the dialog, type the project ID and then click Shut down to delete the project.

gcloud CLI

1. To delete a project, use the gcloud projects delete command:

   gcloud projects delete PROJECT_ID
   

Related topics

• Learn more about what Google Meet REST API can do and review the reference documentation.
• Read about how to Subscribe to events using the Google Workspace Events API.
• To learn more about authentication, see Configure the OAuth consent screen and choose scopes.