I'm interested in integrating Google Docs with our application, and curious if the API will support our use case.
Our user would see a link on our site to open a document (document created programmatically). When they click the link, it would open up Google Docs (in another browser tab) in either write or read-only mode depending on permission in our system. Preferably the user wouldn't need a Google account at all. Also, before they click the link we would like to show a completely static HTML representation of a particular revision of that document. It would be also nice to listen to changes (from our back-end) to documents to update say the static html or some such. They wouldn't be able to create new documents, or delete the document.
In Summary:
Control document create/deletion
Control document sharing (some workaround may be acceptable here)
Authenticate thru our service to edit/view doc
Add comments to document thru API
Turn document into static HTML
It might be nice to customize the Google Doc editor to make it more geared for the type documents we create (film scripts), but not required, a template is helpful, so creating a doc with a template would be nice.
Which API's, account types, etc do we need to accomplish the above if possible?
A Google account is required to interact with Google Drive and Google Docs. What you could do is, upon clicking, authorize access to the user's Google Drive account, copy a doc into their Drive, and then redirect them into editing the newly copied doc. All of your other requirements are supported.
You can do these things with the Google Drive SDK.
Related
I know it is possible to get a link that will initiate a download of a file from Google Drive. But this is not exactly what I am looking for. I want to be able to have the link of a file with its extension.
For example, it is possible to do this with Dropbox. I am able to get a direct link if I change "www.dropbox.com" to "dl.dropboxusercontent.com". So if I have a video file, it will play on the browser's player instead of opening the page to download it.
With Google Drive I don't know how to do this. If I generate a direct link, it will then create a link that automatically starts a download. A direct link for a .txt file will not be rendered on the browser. It will be downloaded instead.
So, it is possible to have a direct link to a file in Google Drive that is not the direct link that starts downloading automatically, but instead with the directory/file.ext?
There are several things you need to understand about how the Google drive api works.
When you do a file.get with the Google Drive api it returns a file resource this is the response for the file itself. The information about it that google is willing to share with us. There are two fields here you may find interesting
The first thing you should know is that a file has one or the other of these links not both. If the file is a binary type for example an image you will be given a webContentLink which can be used to download the file, If its say a google sheet then you will be given a webViewLink which can be used to view the file in Google Drive web application.
Which link you get depends entirely upon the type of file it is. No matter which link you get you will still need to have permission to access this file. So whoever clicks the link must have at the very least read permission to the file.
On the Google drive web application we can create links which can be shared with anyone and allow anyone to "access" there is no way to create these links VIA the api.
What you wish to do is out of scope for the Google drive api, probably due to security reasons. Also the simple fact that google drive api is not a file service api it a file storage system. THere is a difference.
I'm new to the Google APIs, and would like to write a small service class for my web application that:
creates blank Google document without user assistance
assigns a generated title
returns a URL that can be provided to multiple people to edit this document
This document mst be editable via a sharing link. Ideally it is owned/managed as part of the web service's Drive storage.
Code is welcome if it's easier than explaining, but I'm really asking for help understanding Google's service offering.
Can I fully authenticate using only credentials specific to my app? (e.g. call the Drive API without prompting an interloper/observer/user to
authenticate.)
Once authenticated, can I create documents local to my
API?
Whose quota are the created documents consuming, the person that created the API key?
Can I share
these created documents with others?
Will I be able to manage a list of
these created file URLs from a standard Google web UI?
Just to clarify what it is that you are asking. You want to be able to embed a google doc on your website A couple things that can happen here.
First, you will need to create a google doc, lets say a spreadsheet. Within that spreadsheet you will:
click File > Publish to the Web.
From here a new window will be brought up. Click Embed and Published content and settings and click the publish button. Ensure the Automatically republish when changes are made checkbox. (this will allow for your website to be automatically updated anytime that doc is changed.
Take the embedded link that is generated and plop it in your webpage and it will be live.
Now you can share the page via Google Docs and anyone that has that link can make changes to that spreadsheet. As soon as a change is made, it will update on your website with the next refresh.
Hope this is all clear, let me know if there is anything unclear.
Cheers
I have a webapp, mywebapp.com, that successfully gets user permission to access Google Drive, mostly following examples for server-side flow here:
https://developers.google.com/drive/web/auth/web-server
I successfully upload, then access those SAME files.
However, what I really want to do is access OTHER files, in particular Google Docs docs. Can this be done, and how?
If not, can it be done with client-side flow using regular JavaScript (not Google's hosted scripts)?
What your app can and cannot see is determined by the scope. The possible values are enumerated here https://developers.google.com/drive/web/scopes
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.
I'm looking for some clarification on accessing Google docs/Drive SDK via a Service Account.
I have everything set up in the API Console and I can successfully generate an access token via the JWT process and indeed I can issue requests to either drive SDK or the Docs List API to get a listing of documents. However, the document listing is always empty, I was expecting to see all the documents in my Google Drive. I am obviously not understanding fully what a service account gives you. If I upload a document via the Service Account then it does show up correctly, but is not visible in my Google Drive, it's as if the Service Account is a totally separate black box.
The reason I want to use Service Accounts is that I have a service running that needs to upload documents to various clients Google Docs accounts, without them having to go through the OAuth dance as there will be no UI interaction at all. Is this possible with Google docs. I was hoping that they could just send my the client_email and the certificate with the private key and I would be able to upload documents to that account.
Many thanks for your consideration
-Marshall
Not sure whether you need the answer anymore, but I just faced with the same issue, came to this post. Found one solution which works in my case, so sharing with everyone here.
The only integration point towards GoogleDrive in my case is document listing.
When I first created my service account, it didn't work as well (just empty list all the time).
What did I do to fix it:
Go to MyDrive UI https://drive.google.com/#my-drive
Checked all the documents I want to see on my website
In the top menu clicked "More"->"Share..."->"Share..."
In "Add people" section (new window "Sharing settings (N items)") I added service account email (format is "XXXXXX##developer.gserviceaccount.com")
Run document listing once again and got it working.