How to build a Gmail-centric app?
There is a particular Gmail automation which I believe could save users time - by automatically identifying and labelling messages from a particular community, in a way that a standard Gmail search cannot accomplish.
I have written a Google Script to test the logic on my own Gmail account.
Assuming there were a market for this, what's the easiest way to go about packaging that up in such a way that customers could sign up, authenticate their Gmail and pay a small monthly fee for the value?
I've never done that before.
Thanks.
Over the years, I and my professional colleagues have turned to Google Chrome Extensions for any automations to do with Gmail. It's quick and super ease to use.
You could wrap your application in a Chrome Extenstion and publish it in the Google Chrome Store. Your application's authentication and other interfaces could also be wrapped in the app.
You'll need to register an app on Google and assign it the proper gmail permissions. Then, your users can go through an oauth flow to grant those permissions to your app to query gmail's APIs on your behalf.
here's the google documentation on the process.
And here's an intro to oauth if you haven't worked with that flow before.
Thanks for this, and I've checked out the two links, but I'll hit a wall.
I probably chose the wrong kind of group Here, as I'm not strictly a developer, but this is where I'll always get stuck until I can call myself that. I presume your "register an app" would refer to a web app you have already written, which then needs an account system etc etc, beside just authenticating with Google and leveraging Gmail. I'll have none of these things.
Wish there was a way I could find to ask better "How would I" questions.
No worries! By register an app I mean register an application in the google developers console. If you are making any kind of application that uses google's APIs to fetch/create data, google requires you to register that application in their system (and add branding, API permissions you'll need, etc).
And yes, you will also need to build your own application with it's own auth system.
For what you're trying to build, I would recommend hiring a developer. If that's not an option though, I'd recommend using a no-code app builder that has an oauth2 flow built-in. This will enable you to use google's authentication flow for users to log into your web app. I think that's a good place to start, and then you can ask another question here regarding actually using the APIs for your app functionality.
Thank-you.
I see Bubble.io supports OAuth, incidentally, and I've been needing a reason to learn that app.