I work for an un-launched startup that handles a large amount of user media. We are looking to integrate Google Drive as a way for a user to store that media.
Is it possible to have read/write access to a user's Google Drive, after obtaining their permission via OAUTH2? More specifically the ability to create folders on their drive and access them for read/write scenarios.
We would also need to be able to generate direct links to their photos, videos, etc.
We've successfully integrated with Dropbox in this manner and would like to offer Google Drive as an alternative. Are these scenarios possible with Google Drive?
Yes, this is absolutely possible.
You will want to read about our Auth Scopes and determine what the minimal set of scopes are that you need to operate. As an example, drive.file scope will enable you to create files & folders, read them, as well as read/write any existing files that a user explicitly opens with your application.
The 'explicitly open' part can be handled in 2 ways. You can register an 'Open' action for your app in the Drive UI for certain file types and you can use our 'File Picker' widget in your app to enable the user to select which files to open/grant access. You can read about opening files in our docs
Related
I am building an app that functions as a markdown editor, and have Google authentication / login functioning. I have users asking if they can choose to have their documents save to their google drive rather than to my servers, which seems to work fine via the Google Drive v3 API, saved to the app data folder.
However, users are also able to generate a collaborator link for others to visit and which allows them to edit the files as co-owners. I would like to maintain this sharing capability with the Google Drive files, but this (very old) answer suggests that sharing in this way may not possible with files in appdata, because:
Appdata content is supposed to be exclusive to the application.
Does this mean that, as long as my users all access these files exclusively via the app, sharing appdata between users is possible? Or is the appdata folder exclusive to the application and the user? If so, is it at least possible to share editor access to google drive files created by my app but outside the appdata folder?
I'm imagining this process:
User1 creates a file in my app and then my app saves it to his Google Drive (preferably in appdata)
User1 generates a collaborator link via my app, gives it to User2
User2 visits the link which opens User1's file within my app, edits it
User2's edits are saved, and my app updates the original User1's file via the API
Question:
"Or is the appdata folder exclusive to the application and the user?"
Answer:
Yes, it is exclusive for your app on their Drive.
Notes:
Use the AppData folder for Application Data, not User Data.
If the file is created by your app, and you want to store it in the user's Drive, you can use the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file scope. You app will always have access to that file because it was created by it.
Keep in mind that if your app requires restricted scopes you will have to go through verification.
Is it possible to download a private access file from Google drive via api?
The reason I want this is to prevent people from sharing the download link because I want to provide files for paid customer only.
If its not what are my option to provide file download only for paid customers and preventing them from sharing those download links with others?
You may want to set scopes for your users to restrict the level of access. See Download Files.
Downloading the file requires the user to have at least read access. Additionally, your app must be authorized with a scope that allows reading of file content. For example, an app using the drive.readonly.metadata scope would not be authorized to download the file contents. Users with edit permission may restrict downloading by read-only users by setting the viewersCanCopyContent field to true.
You may also want to look at Files especially the viewersCanCopyContent.
viewersCanCopyContent
boolean
Whether users with only reader or commenter permission can copy the file's content. This affects copy, download, and print operations.
Is there a way to get sandboxed, user-selected directory access on any major file service without first getting read level access to their entire filesystem?
There's a lot of talk about "unhosted" static webapps that allow users to access their data from a 3rd party file service (Google Drive, Dropbox, their own server, etc.). The most notable effort I've found so far is remoteStorage.io, but there doesn't seem to be a way with any major provider to let the user select a directory and then use that as a sandbox without breaking their trust (i.e. getting read access to all their files first).
From the user's perspective, the webapp shouldn't have access to anything else on the remote file storage except the one folder the user grants it access to (for example, I might grant a text editor access to my FunnyJokes folder).
The current work around seems to be having the webapp force a specific folder name ahead of time ("this app wants access to /appname_notes"), but that rules out letting the user point it to where they may already have their notes.
Does anyone know of a nice way to do this with Google Drive, Dropbox, or the like?
The user experience that makes the most sense to me is something like...
User opens an unhosted webapp (for example, a basic text editor TextyApp). They click a button to connect with their data.
3rd party auth page appears (for example, Google Drive) and it says "The app TextyApp has requested read/write access to your files. Please select a directory to use."
Confirmation screen: "Grant read/write access to folder FunnyJokes for TextyApp?"
The page redirects back to the webapp with sandboxed accessed to the user-specified folder and the files within it.
This seems like how remote file storage should work, but I haven't found a way to do it yet. Any thoughts/suggestions would be great!
Cheers,
Adam
Edit: To clarify, I'm not talking about storing hidden "application data", but instead letting the user specify a particular directory to sandbox for use with a webapp that they may not want to give broader access to.
The Dropbox Apps API provides the ability to restrict any app using your API key to a single directory of your Dropbox account. So users could create an API key with access to a specific directory and then plug that into your app. However, that's not a user-friendly workflow.
I think the Dropbox Drop-Ins Chooser/Saver API might be close to what you want. The user is presented with a Dropbox file selection popup, and your app only gets access to the specific file(s) that the user selects.
With remoteStorage, sandboxed directory access is currently the default way for apps to request (and users to grant) access to the storage. However, users cannot manually select or enter custom directories during the connect phase.
This is a follow up to Google Realtime API - what is the role of a shortcut file in google drive?
What is the effect of share settings on a shortcut file? Does a user need to share this shortcut file with other collaborators?
In my case, my web application already contains share settings between users. These are my own share setting that I store in my database. They are currently sharing between each other but have to edit a file one person at a time. Ideally I would like to just use the settings from my application to seamlessly make it so that they can collaborate at the same time, without having them to once again give edit permissions.
The share settings control who has access to read or write to a realtime document, just like for any other Drive file.
They can be set programmatically via the Drive API, or you can allow users to update settings via a common sharing dialog. See https://developers.google.com/drive/manage-sharing
If you have an existing setup, you could programmatically transfer the share settings to the realtime shortcut files as one-off transition step. We don't generally recommend trying to keep them in sync, as it can be a bit tricky, but its possible.
I want to use the Google drive sdk to save data from my app in the user's own Google drive account. This will mean that the developers of the app (i.e. me) won't have access to sensitive data that the user is storing.
I have found some docs about how to do this (the app will be a Google app engine app) but I was wondering if I can lock this data or hide it completely so that a user can't go in and edit the data and possibly cause problems.
I know that Android apps that use Google drive do not leave any visible files that I can see when I go to my drive account.
Thanks
When creating the file, set the hidden label to True. This will hide the file from most user views. Note that it doesn't completely prevent the user from finding and modifying the file if they own it.
If you need the file to be uneditable by the owner, your app will need to own it and only grant the user view access.
In Google Play Services 4.3, they added an "Application Folder." This is designed to allow applications to store data in a user's drive without allowing them to modify this data. It's available for android and web, don't see it listed for iOS.