Good day! I am currently developing a website using Google Drive API. However, I am wondering if is it possible to know if a certain file is created/uploaded/shared by the project using an App Id. I was thinking if it is belong to the attributes of a file. But, when i checked, it seems that, there's no such thing.
What I am trying to do, is to filter the files' shared by the other user to the owner of the account using my web site. Is it possible? Any suggestions on how to do it?
Thank you in advance.
File metadata doesn't contain this information unfortunatelly, therefore you can't know if some file was created by your app or not. But FYI Google store it somewhere, if you will try to upload somefile without providing its content type (* / *) and after that try to open this file through browser you will see the message:
No preview available
This item was created with YourAppName, a Google Drive app.
Download this file or use one of the apps you have installed to open it.
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.
Lets say I have a web URL to a file on a cloud storage (like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc). How do I convert that to the corresponding file path on my pc? On Android? On iOS?
Assuming of course I have the utilities/apps installed locally.
EDIT: I interested in file name the reverse direction too. (I.e. when I have the local file path, what is the web path?)
EDIT 2: #Greg just made me realize that the problem with file name is much worse on Google Drive than on Dropbox.
And that is very bad. :-(
The reason? Google has good search capabilities on Drive and therefor I and many, many others have put their documents on Drive. However, once I found it I must locate it on my on computer/device. (If I want to edit a pdf for example.)
EDIT 3: #Dan McGrath kindly asked what parts remain unsolved.
Short answer: All. ;-)
Long answer: My actual use case, see below.
My actual use case is a Zotero web app. Zotero is a reference database where you store references to scientific articles, web pages, etc. The items stored in Zotero may include PDF files or - which I prefer - links to PDF files.
I just want to be able to easy access (read) this PDF files from any computer through the web app. And on my own computer I want to be able to edit the files with my local PDF editor. (Be it Android, Windows or whatever.)
By using a cloud storage I do not have to download/upload the files myself. The cloud storage takes care of that part.
For the "reverse" scenario, that is, you have a file and you want the Dropbox shared link, you can use this API endpoint, assuming you're connected to the account via the API:
https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/docs#shares
I have a collection of PDF files on a Google Drive. I have shared them and I want to be able to link to them from a list on a web site. What I'd like to be able to do is work out the file name of the PDF using information in the list. As a simple example, if my list contains items 1, 2 and 3 I'd like to be able to upload PDF files 1.PDF 2.PDF and 3.PDF to Google Drive then have the web site just link to those when a link is clicked and show the PDF files in the browser.
So, I guess I could do this just by uploading the PDF to Google Drive and manually adding a link to PDF on the web site. However, what I want to do is generate the link programmatically so that when I have, say, 50 PDF files I don't have to keep getting the link from Google Drive and adding it to the web site. The site should just work out that item 50, say, in the list will link to 50.PDF, for example.
I've tried to get the file id using the API but that requires the authorization token to be generated and manual intervention to take place, so that won't work. At least, not at the point where the file is viewed because the viewer is anonymous.
So my questions are:
Is it possible to work out what a file name will be on the drive using just something like an item number in a list?
I guess that there are maybe some other options - for example, when I add the items to the list on the web site programmatically, I could go and locate the google drive file manually using a web application and link it using the file id at that point. I could store the ID in a database - however, would any anonymous user then be able to just click on the file link on the web site and view the file?
Finally, can anyone think of another way to do this?
Any help would be appreciated! :)
Is it possible for you to use a service account? You can authorize the app with an account dedicated to your app and user doesn't need to authorize and authenticate. The files you will be uploading will be managed under the service account's Drive.
You can learn more about service accounts on https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2ServiceAccount
If you have implementation specific questions, please ask.
I've succeeded in using the filesystem API in a Chrome App on my Chromebook. But none of the examples I've found allow you to open files from Google Drive. Any number of apps on the Chromebook (supplied or added) open the exact same dialog but with Google Drive showing on the left along with Download and External Drive.
Is there a simple example App which shows how this is done?
Or am I simply missing some concept which will make even the Diff or TextEdit examples work this way if done (like pushing the App to the store, perhaps -- right now I'm just loading and packing my own off local storage)?
From reading your comment it seems that you will want to use google drive sdk in order to integrate the 'open file' dialog into your web app.
and even more to the point - the file 'picker' - In order to integrate the file picker you will need to use google JS client lib. Then you will be able to open the file dialog with a code like this:
// Use the Google Loader script to load the google.picker script.
google.setOnLoadCallback(createPicker);
google.load('picker', '1');
// Create and render a Picker object for searching images.
function createPicker() {
var picker = new google.picker.PickerBuilder().
addView(google.picker.ViewId.IMAGE_SEARCH).
setCallback(pickerCallback).
build();
picker.setVisible(true);
}
Good luck.
The answer to this is to use the <input type="file" name="somename" size="chars"> code in the browser. That is what is producing this. It creates a standard way to read in the file from disk or Google drive. It's what I've seen in multiple apps. All the API stuff is a red herring, if what one wants is to get access to this simple dialog.
However, it doesn't allow me to WRITE, just to read, since one would expect it to be returning only the content of the file, not a file handle of any sort, or even the full name. I'll play with it and figure out whether there's any hook I can find to tell me to write it to Google drive (using the links Ido provided above). If anyone has suggestions on where to snag the full path (or an interesting Google Drive path) somewhere using this, I'll love to hear them.
Has anyone had any luck with the downloading of files using the google docs api?
I've been struggling for weeks now to get this working with no success.
https://developers.google.com/google-apps/documents-list/#downloading_documents_and_files
I can get the list of files successfully and display within my web page. However what i want to do next is allow the user to click on a file link which will then open it up in a google docs viewer allowing them to then view and edit that file.
Please advice.
I'd recommend using the newer Google Drive API which is easier to use, supports multiple programming languages and has documentation for each method, including downloading files:
https://developers.google.com/drive/manage-downloads