Struggling to use my own API key with googlesheets4 in shinyapps.io

I've got googlesheets4 working in a shinyapps.io with the following code:

  gs4_auth(
email = "me@email.com",
path = NULL,
scopes = "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive",
cache = "path_to_cache",
use_oob = FALSE,
token = NULL)

I run this locally, which requires initial browser authentication and downloads a file of some sort.

As long as I upload that file with my app to shinyapps.io, then it works (i.e. refreshes the token whenever it needs).

However, as I understand it, this is using googlesheets4 own Google API settings, which were set up to make it easy for everyone to use.

The disadvantage is that, since a lot of people are sharing this API, they sometimes (myself included) hit the data limits and get a 429 RESOURCE EXHAUSTED error. This is discussed here.

OK, so I've followed the instructions here and here and added the following code BEFORE the auth chunk already provided:

if (interactive()){
  # Desktop Client ID
  google_app <- httr::oauth_app(
    "my-awesome-google-api-wrapping-package",
    key = "mykey_for_desktop_app",
    secret = "mysecret"
  )
}else{
  # Web Client ID
  google_app <- httr::oauth_app(
    "my-awesome-google-api-wrapping-package",
    key = "mykey_for_web_app",
    secret = "mysecret"
  )
}

# API key
google_key <- "My-API-KEY"
gs4_auth_configure(app = google_app, api_key = google_key)
# Also configure google drive to use my API
drive_auth_configure(app = google_app, api_key = google_key)

So this seems to work locally (e.g. in RStudio) and I can see activity on my Google Cloud API dashboard.

However, whilst this works for a short period of time (e.g. 10 mins), even when uploaded to shinyapps.io, the auto-refresh seems to fail because I soon get the dreaded:

"Can't get Google credentials. Are you running googlesheets4 in a non-interactive session?"

Is anyone able to point me towards what I'm doing wrong?

Again - it works fine as long as I'm not trying to use my own API settings (the second code chunk).

Solution

OK, pretty sure I've got this working...

It was the YouTube video here that really helped, and made this more clear.

All I need is a Service Account, which seems to generate a json file that I can upload with my app.

i.e. at around 1:03 in the video shows the creation of this service account, then adding that e-mail address (of the Service Account) to the Google Sheet(s) I want to access, this means I can download (using GoogleDrive) and write (using GoogleSheets).

The crazy part is that all I need to put in my code is the following:

drive_auth(path = ".secrets/client_secret.json")
gs4_auth(path = ".secrets/client_secret.json")

i.e. those two lines (plus the downloaded json file for the Service Account) replace ALL the code I posted in my OP!