“Unfortunately, an error occurred while connecting to Google”

Google Analytics for WordPress is a great plugin by Yoast to make adding Analytics tracking to your WordPress site easy. All was well until Google updated their authentication and authorization APIs, thus breaking the plugin’s ability to load your Google Analytics accounts and properties using your Google credentials via OpenID and OAuth. The error that comes back in this case is "Unfortunately, an error occurred while connecting to Google" but no additional information on what exactly the problem was. It has been broken for some time now, and although you can enter your UA code manually, I decided to just fix the code in question.

In a nutshell Google updated their URLs and transitioned from an XML interface to a JSON RESTful web service. The changes are pretty straightforward, but now require two calls to Google to get both the Analytics Accounts associated with your username/auth token and a second one to get all of the Analytics Properties (though they can be loaded for all properties at the same time by using ~all in place of the account id in the request.

The file to modify lives under /wp-content/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/googleanalytics.php. Here is what the code looks like in my version, currently the latest, at 4.2.8. and starts on line 383 and ends on line 435. Replace the code here with the code below it:

// ... Opening code
	$response  = $gdata->get( 'https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/accounts/default' );
	$http_code = wp_remote_retrieve_response_code( $response );
	$response  = wp_remote_retrieve_body( $response );

	if ( $http_code == 200 ) {
		$options['ga_api_responses'][$token] = array(
			'response'=> array( 'code'=> $http_code ),
			'body'    => $response
		);
		$options['ga_token']                 = $token;
		update_option( 'Yoast_Google_Analytics', $options );
	}
}

if ( isset( $options['ga_api_responses'][$token] ) && is_array( $options['ga_api_responses'][$token] ) && $options['ga_api_responses'][$token]['response']['code'] == 200 ) {
	$arr = yoast_xml2array( $options['ga_api_responses'][$token]['body'] );

	$ga_accounts = array();
	if ( isset( $arr['feed']['entry'][0] ) ) {
		foreach ( $arr['feed']['entry'] as $site ) {
			$ua      = $site['dxp:property']['3_attr']['value'];
			$account = $site['dxp:property']['1_attr']['value'];
			if ( !isset( $ga_accounts[$account] ) || !is_array( $ga_accounts[$account] ) )
				$ga_accounts[$account] = array();
			$ga_accounts[$account][$site['title']] = $ua;
		}
	} else {
		$ua      = $arr['feed']['entry']['dxp:property']['3_attr']['value'];
		$account = $arr['feed']['entry']['dxp:property']['1_attr']['value'];
		$title   = $arr['feed']['entry']['title'];
		if ( !isset( $ga_accounts[$account] ) || !is_array( $ga_accounts[$account] ) )
			$ga_accounts[$account] = array();
		$ga_accounts[$account][$title] = $ua;
	}
// ... Closing code

The modified code looks like this:

// ... Opening code
	// Get all of the Accounts for this oauth token
	$url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/analytics/v3/management/accounts';
	$response  = $gdata->get( $url );
	$http_code = wp_remote_retrieve_response_code( $response );
	$response  = wp_remote_retrieve_body( $response );

	if ( $http_code == 200 ) {
		$options['ga_api_responses'][$token] = array(
			'acct_response'=> array( 'code'=> $http_code ),
			'acct_body'    => $response
		);

		// Get all of the properties for this oauth token
		$url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/analytics/v3/management/accounts/~all/webproperties/';
		$response  = $gdata->get( $url );
		$http_code = wp_remote_retrieve_response_code( $response );
		$response  = wp_remote_retrieve_body( $response );

		if ( $http_code == 200 ) {
			$options['ga_api_responses'][$token]['response'] = array( 'code'=> $http_code );
			$options['ga_api_responses'][$token]['body'] = $response;

			$options['ga_token']                 = $token;
			update_option( 'Yoast_Google_Analytics', $options );
		}
	}
}

if ( isset( $options['ga_api_responses'][$token] ) && is_array( $options['ga_api_responses'][$token] ) && $options['ga_api_responses'][$token]['response']['code'] == 200 ) {

	// Get all of the accounts so we can reference the name by ID
	$account_info = array();
	$json = json_decode( $options['ga_api_responses'][$token]['acct_body'] );
	foreach ($json->items as $item) {
		$account_id = strval($item->id);
		$account_info[$account_id] = $item->name;
	}

	// Get all of the properties in to an array
	$ga_accounts = array();
	$json = json_decode( $options['ga_api_responses'][$token]['body'] );
	foreach ($json->items as $item) {
		$account_id = strval($item->accountId);
		$account = $account_info[$account_id];
		$ua = $item->id;
		$title = $item->name; 

		// make sure we have an arrary created to hold the properties
		if ( !isset( $ga_properties[$account] ) || !is_array( $ga_properties[$account] ) )
			$ga_accounts[$account] = array();

		// Save the property by account for display
		$ga_accounts[$account][$title] = $ua;
	}
// ... Closing code

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