403 "Request had insufficient authentication scopes" when creating drafts in Google API with Python
gmail-api, python-2.7
Solution
You probably have a global variable `SCOPES` in you code with the value of `https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.readonly` if you are following the Quickstart. These scopes are used when your users are redirected to Google in order to give you an `access_token` so you can read the contents of your user's gmail account.
In order to send drafts etc. you need one of the scopes you mentioned, e.g. `https://mail.google.com/`. Change your value of `SCOPES` to this string, and remove your credentials located at `~/.credentials/gmail-python-quickstart.json` as outlined by the Quickstart in order to get new credentials that can do more than just read content.
Problem
I am working with the google api for the first time, and am new to coding in general, and have a question that I'm sure is very simple, but I cannot find the answer to. When I run the following code - ``` credentials = get_credentials() http = credentials.authorize(httplib2.Http()) service = discovery.build('gmail', 'v1', http=http) results = service.users().labels().list(userId='me').execute() labels = results.get('labels', []) if not labels: print('No labels found.') else: print('Labels:') for label in labels: print(label['name']) message_body = "This is the message" message = {'message': message_body} draft = service.users().drafts().create(userId='me', body=message).execute() ``` I am successfully able to list the labels in my gmail account, but the request to create a draft kicks back an error message "Request had insufficient authentication request". I found that creating drafts requires one of the following scopes: - https://mail.google.com/ - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.modify - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.compose but for the life of me, I cannot figure out what exactly that means or how to make that happen, though I've done my best to find this somewhere.