AttributeError: 'Credentials' object has no attribute 'request' in Google Sheets API script

[Demianeen]

I wanted to write a small Python script for myself, but found that whenever I use Sheets service I get the following error:
AttributeError: 'Credentials' object has no attribute 'request'.

I am relatively new to Python, so bear with me if I missed something obvious.

Environment details

• OS type and version: MacOS 15.1.1 (24B91)
• Chip: M1 Pro
• Python version: 3.12.6
• poetry version: 1.8.4
• google-api-python-client version: 2.155.0

Steps to reproduce

1. poetry new app
2. poetry add google-api-python-client google-auth-httplib2 google-auth-oauthlib
3. Add credentials.json file
4. Add code from Code example section
5. poetry run python -m app

Code example

app/__main__.py:

import os.path
from io import BytesIO

from google.auth.transport.requests import Request
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from google_auth_oauthlib.flow import InstalledAppFlow
from googleapiclient.http import MediaIoBaseUpload
from googleapiclient.discovery import Resource, build

SCOPES = [
    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/documents",
    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive",
    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets",
]


def authenticate(
    scopes: list[str],
    *,
    token_filepath: str = "token.json",
    credentials_filepath: str = "credentials.json",
):
    creds = None

    if os.path.exists(token_filepath):
        creds = Credentials.from_authorized_user_file(token_filepath)

        if not creds.has_scopes(scopes):
            print("Token scopes do not match the required scopes. Regenerating token.")
            os.remove(token_filepath)
            creds = None

    # If there are no credentials available or not all scopes are avaliable, let the user log in.
    if not creds:
        print("No credentials available. Requesting new token")
        flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(credentials_filepath, scopes)
        creds = flow.run_local_server(port=0)
        # Save the credentials for the next run
        with open(token_filepath, "w") as token:
            token.write(creds.to_json())

    if not creds.valid and creds.expired and creds.refresh_token:
        creds.refresh(Request())

    return creds


if __name__ == "__main__":
    creds = authenticate(SCOPES)
    sheets_service = build("sheets", "v4", creds)

    spreadsheet = {"properties": {"title": "test"}}
    spreadsheet = ( # <--- error occurs because of this line
        sheets_service.spreadsheets()
        .create(body=spreadsheet, fields="spreadsheetId")
        .execute()
    )

Stack trace

~/projects/repros/app ❯ poetry run python -m app
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 198, in _run_module_as_main
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 88, in _run_code
  File "/Users/demian/projects/repros/app/app/__main__.py", line 56, in <module>
    .execute()
     ^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/demian/Library/Caches/pypoetry/virtualenvs/app-PJXYrkgl-py3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/googleapiclient/_helpers.py", line 130, in positional_wrapper
    return wrapped(*args, **kwargs)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/demian/Library/Caches/pypoetry/virtualenvs/app-PJXYrkgl-py3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/googleapiclient/http.py", line 923, in execute
    resp, content = _retry_request(
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/demian/Library/Caches/pypoetry/virtualenvs/app-PJXYrkgl-py3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/googleapiclient/http.py", line 191, in _retry_request
    resp, content = http.request(uri, method, *args, **kwargs)
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'Credentials' object has no attribute 'request'```

Poetry dependencies:

[tool.poetry.dependencies]
python = "^3.12"
google-api-python-client = "^2.155.0"
google-auth-httplib2 = "^0.2.0"
google-auth-oauthlib = "^1.2.1"

[0x78f1935]

Hi,

First I thought perhaps your issue was related to my issue, but diving deeper into your problem I don't think that was the case.
The reason why I had to dive deeper into your problem is because you are using a different authentication scope then I do.

In addition, you also use a service account, and I use an access token.

I think this is important information. Oh, also, I'm just shooting here, I'm not sure if this is the reason why your Credentials don't work. But let me share anyways:

The first thing that I noticed, was that your scope difference from mine. Mine looks like this

email profile https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile openid

The scope is obtained from the access token in my single sign on flow. I had to know if you simply forgot some keywords in your scope, since I have email, profile and openid. So I checked the docs about scopes.

In my honest opinion, google docs are a bit strange and overwhelming, but you can click the Apps Script API, v1 title above the table where your scopes are located.

It opens this page, with a very annoying warning;
Warning: The Apps Script API does not work with [service accounts](https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2ServiceAccount).

My guess, is that your Credentials have no request attribute because service accounts probably cannot use the API at all. Which explains why there is no request attribute.

I do think the library should give you a proper warning / error when this happens if I'm correct
I wouldn't mind a second opinion to confirm my way of thoughts

[Demianeen]

@0x78f1935 thanks! You gave me idea to check if quickstart code works for me, and it did! Then I started to partially replace it with my code and found that the issue is in how I pass creds to build command, I passed it as normal argument instead of named one:
build("sheets", "v4", creds) -> build("sheets", "v4", credentials=creds)

This small typing mismatch caused the entire error.

That brings me to another important point: type safety seems lacking in the google-api-python-client library. The build function doesn't specify parameter types, making it hard to catch these mistakes. I discovered there is a google-api-python-client-stubs package that solves this issue, but it’s not mentioned in the docs.

Original types:

After installing type stubs: