We would like access to a client’s folder within their Google Drive and all files under that folder. This can either be a folder we create from the app or a folder the client picks.
The first approach I tried was to create the folder from the app.
The problem is that I am only able to list the folder itself, but NONE of the content. https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/folder
The second approach was to use the Google Picker API. There the
client can choose which folder(s) to give us access to. However we
can only get access to the folder, and none of the children
folders/files. https://developers.google.com/picker/docs
This seemed like an easy and straightforward use case. But can’t seem to find a solution in their documentation, or maybe I don’t comprehend some of the logic. A solution would be a way to either propagate the permission to all the files included in the folder it get’s picked or created… or to have the picker select all the children.
My preference is to continue with the Recommended scope https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file . And it might be that the folder contains thousands of individual files multiple levels in, so it’s not a solution to manually pick the files. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
A possible solution for your situation...
Is to create the folder in a shared drive.
Therefore, even though new files are added/updated/removed you will still be able to see all the updates and retrieve the information needed as you will have constant access to this folder.
Another solution which is more cumbersome...
Is to ask for user's permission and to re-authorize the application each time they are using it so in the case a new file is added you will have access to it.
Reference
Drive API v3 shared drives;
Drive API v3 manage shared drives.
The first approach I tried was to create the folder from the app. The problem is that I am only able to list the folder itself, but NONE of the content. https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/folder
The issue is probably the scope you authorized the user with. If you authorized with read only access your not going to be able to create you need full drive access to do that.
If you are using https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file then you should create a folder with that and then create a file in the folder that i believe should work.
The second approach was to use the Google Picker API. There the client can choose which folder(s) to give us access to. However we can only get access to the folder, and none of the children folders/files. https://developers.google.com/picker/docs
There is no way to request access for a single folder or files. Its all or nothing really unless you use the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file scope which would only give you access to the files that your application created.
Related
I'm looking to switch all domain-shared files from "Shared with Domain" to "Shared with group". I'm trying to identify whether a permission on a GDrive file (not from Shared Drive) is inherited or not. However Drive V3 API does not appear to expose permissions/permissionDetails attribute in same way as Shared Drives. Is there an efficient way to get the "inherited" status of a permissions? Trying to avoid having to walk the folder hierarchy.
Background on use case: We have decided that shared to domain is overly broad as the company grows. We have many consultants and contractors who should not see everything in the firm. We want to switch from Shared to domain to Shared with groups to better manage least privilege. We are aware that we cannot change UI at this time.
Answer:
There's no direct way to get the inherited status of file permissions in Drive API.
Explanation:
permissionDetails is only available to shared drive items, and neither Permissions nor Files include any additional fields regarding inheritance.
Therefore, I don't think you can use inheritance to filter out the files to update.
Feature request:
There's a feature request in Issue Tracker related to this:
Sharing permission inheritance details not mention in API
You could consider starring it in order to keep track of it and to help prioritizing it, but since it hasn't had much activity, I'd strongly suggest you to file a new one using this template.
Related:
Permission details are not returned in Google Drive API V3
Google drive api v3 permission details
I need to edit Google Drive files created with my nodeJs webapp and owned by me or shared with me.
Using "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive/file" scope I can edit files owned by me.
To edit also files shared with me I must use "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive" scope. But this scope sends a very scary message to users on login: "This wil allow xxx to: see, edit or delete all of your Google Drive files" (bold is mine).
I don't want to delete your files and I don't want to edit all of your files: is there a way to reach my goal with a less scary scope?
The only alternative to the drive scope, if you want to edit the files, is drive.file, which gives access to files that you have opened or created with the app (ref).
Since this is not an option for you, I'm afraid you'll have to use the scary scope.
Feature request:
Considering your situation, I think you might be interested in this Feature Request, regarding the possibility to restrict access to a specific folder. I think that could be very useful for you if it got implemented. I'd suggest you to star that issue, both to keep track of its development and to help prioritize its implemenation:
Drive Restrict access to folder when authorizing applications
Related:
Google Drive API: 404 when accessing file someone else created
Google Sheet OAuth scopes to only access a few files?
I'm trying to create script to download all files from another user shared folder in google drive using rest api. If i'm right, there are two variants:
Using drive.children.list, with folder ID
Using drive.files.list, with search query like 'FOLDER_ID in parents'
But both of this variants returning only files which were once opened by my google account in browser. If I open file in browser - this file will appear in results of API calls.
Folder is shared for anyone, who has link.
Where is the problem, how I can list all files in folder?
Since you did not give us any info about the SCOPE, I am wild-guessing that it may be your problem. You probably have FILE scope, instead of DRIVE.
Also, I would recommend to test these things with 'TryIt!' here. You can quickly modify both scopes and queries there.
Good Luck
This is a bug/quirk in the Drive API, though there is an easy workaround. If you call files.update with 'addParents=root' it'll add the shared folder under 'My Drive'. This has the effect of making the files part of your corpus and they'll appear in results.
I'm trying to integrate Dropbox into my web application in the following way:
Users can enter a Dropbox Share Link, i.e. a Dropbox folder that can be accessed by anyone, even without a dropbox account.
My application then grabs the images from the folder and displays them to all users of my application.
Now as far as I can tell, the Dropbox API doesn't allow this without sending the user through a full-blown OAuth process. But since the shared link is public anyway, I don't need (and don't want) access to the users Dropbox account.
Is there a way to access a shared link in a programmatic way (without parsing the DOM or similar hacks)? Maybe there is a query parameter on the shared link to retrieve the contents as JSON? If it exists, I didn't find any docs about it.
Surely I'm not the first one to try this, so please share your solutions!
No, there's no programmatic way to list folder contents from a share link. If you have a share link for a specific file, then you can convert the domain from www.dropbox.com to dl.dropboxusercontent.com, but this trick doesn't work on folders.
In Google Drive, when puting a file into a folder, the ACLs of the folder are added to the ACLs of the file.
Is there a way to avoid that? In my use case, a lot of user have "Can View" access on the folder, but only a subset of those will ultimately allowed to view that file. Even if we quickly follow with an ACL update request, there will be a short amount of time during which the visibility of the file is too broad for my use case.
Note that a solution involving having a short period of time during which the access is more limited that what it will ultimately be would be acceptable. Also, I am ready to use either Drive API or Document List API.
This might help
I was so happy when I found it! Unfortunately, it still cannot override file settings, in the case of a document owned by someone else than the containing folder's creator.