GoogleDrive REST API Authentication without intervention - google-drive-api

Question

What i need to do is to authenticate myself into the GoolgeDrive API (I use it in python) to access my drive to do some automatique task.
I would like that my script run alone every hour without any intervention. So what i need is a way to create a credentials object with my login and password.
Is it possible without any redirection and so on?

Answer 1

I think it is not possible to achieve this with user id and password. The way Google Drive implements this is using a refresh token. That means that you authenticate your app one time interactively. This enables you app for one hour. If the refresh token mechanism is properly configured, the app will renew the token every time it needs it subsequently.
Basically the following steps need to be taken
Visit console.developers.google.com
Register a project and obtain Oauth Client IDs
Select as type web server and enter "http://localhost:8080/" as authorized redirect URL
Download the client_secrets.json and store it in the root of your python app
Create a file called "settings.yaml" at the same place with the following content
client_config_backend: settings
client_config:
client_id: YOUR_CLIENT_ID_GOES_HERE
client_secret: YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET_GOES_HERE
save_credentials: True
save_credentials_backend: file
save_credentials_file: credentials.son
get_refresh_token: True
oauth_scope:
- https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file
- https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.install
In your python code you need to do proper authentication and credential saving:
gauth = GoogleAuth()
gauth.settings["get_refresh_token"]=True
gauth.settings["approval_prompt"]="force"
if exists(self.credsFile):
gauth.LoadCredentialsFile(self.credsFile)
if gauth.credentials is None:
# Authenticate if they're not there
gauth.LocalWebserverAuth()
gauth.SaveCredentialsFile(self.credsFile)
elif gauth.access_token_expired:
# Refresh them if expired
gauth.Refresh()
gauth.Authorize()
else:
# Initialize the saved creds
gauth.Authorize()
# Save the current credentials to a file
gauth.SaveCredentialsFile(self.credsFile)
self.driveInstance= GoogleDrive(gauth)
Make sure that you pass in self.credsFile as a valid filename
Executing this code should give you a URL at the console. Copy it to a browser, authenticate and give your consent. Google should ask you for two consents, the second is to authenticate for Google Drive - which is actually done by the refresh token.
The redirect url from the initial credential config in the developer console is called once the consent is given. It calls the temporary web server started by your application. This is how the call back is done. (This implies you have to run browser and your app on the same machine for this step - you may copy over all three files to your server)
From now on your app should run forever without requiring user interaction.