Reply To: Methods for sending access token to Google Analytics 4 Admin API

[Morgan]

For authentication purposes, you don’t inherently need to manually pass an access token when using Google APIs on the server. The JSON config file that you have is used to auto-authenticate your client. The PHP client library for Google APIs uses a service account key file (JSON) referenced in the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable to automatically handle the OAuth 2.0 process. When you pass this environment variable, the client library takes care of generating the access token behind the scenes and using it in subsequent API calls. In your case, make sure your service account has the necessary permissions in Google Analytics and that the path in the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS variable correctly points to your JSON key file.