Google-api-client Authorizing with an API Key in Ruby

The documentation for the Google RESTful APIs is generally pretty good, however when playing with the google-api-client ruby gem, developed by Google to trawl their APIs, I ran into a few issues, particularly when authenticating using an api key (rather than OAuth).

After installing the google-api-client gem, getting a Google API Key (https://code.google.com/apis/console/), and setting up a custom search account (with its prefs widened to all web pages - http://www.google.com/cse/)....

The following allowed me to trawl google search results (copy paste into irb, then inspect response when finished):

  require 'openssl'
  OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE

  require 'google/api_client'
  client = Google::APIClient.new(:key => 'your-api-key', :authorization => nil)
  search = client.discovered_api('customsearch')

  response = client.execute(
    :api_method => search.cse.list,
    :parameters => {
      'q' => 'the hoff',
      'key' => 'your-api-key',
      'cx' => 'your-custom-search-id'
    }
  )

THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT was the :authorization param when constructing he client.... this ensures the api key is used when calling, in preference to oauth. Without it you will get 401 Unauthorized response status everytime.