Finding external shares using Google Drive - google-drive-api

I currently have an application that will search document acls and report back on any external sharing. Since the deprecation of the document list api I would like to covert this application to Google Drive but since the user email address is no longer present in the Permission object returned from Drive is there any way to detect these shares?
Thanks.

Match the username you get from the Owner field to the users in your directory using the profile api https://developers.google.com/google-apps/profiles/. If the user is not in the directory, the user is external.

I suggest you to use 'domain' field in permission to define if your document is shared with an external user or not. You have to campare this field with the domain that you own.
Thanks,

Related

Google drive API Permission to check domain level share permission

I am using the Permissions: get endpoint to check if the user has permission the document.
while i am using this endpoint i came across strange behaviour. it was like this as i need to find out if a given user has permission to edit a given document.
1) if the document directly shared edit permission for that user the above endpoint gives me the correct permission object.
2) if the document is shared with the domain privileges (Anyone at who has the link can edit) . In this case every time it gives me a error response.
My view in this case in the google document view even its the domain level share permission or user level share permission the user get the correct set of workflow. But to check these permission levels from the API endpoints does not works as expected.
Is this a known issue? Is their a another way to check the file permission if it shared under the domain level?
Thanks
Given the fact that there is some missing information (i.e. error message, code snippet, screenshots etc.), I'll make an attempt to answer your question here :)
To check for the file permission, it can be achieved in the following ways:
via Drive API
The Permissions.get resource would be ideal for checking the
permission for a user or domain. You may also try using the
Permissions.list, which would lists all file's permissions.
Google Drive UI
Right click on the file, select "Share..."
Click Advanced
With that being said, I noticed in my testing, if the file (doc) is shared under the domain level and you are not performing this under the same domain, both the view and API resource will return an error response. I suggest making sure when you're calling through the API you're using the appropriate domain user. Hope this helps and Good luck!
The Permissions.Get operation can tell if you a file was shared directly to a user, but it can't tell you if a user has access to the file via a group permission, domain permission, or anyone permission.
Using a Permissions.List operation you might be able to tell if the file is shared to anyone or if it's shared to the user's domain (based on, for example, the user's email address).

Transfer ownership for ALL files in user's google drive - using google-api-java-client and the Drive SDK

We have a google corporate account and need to transfer ALL of a user's google drive files to another account in certain instances. We want to do what is described at the following link for "all files" but programatically via the latest Drive API http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1247799
We are currently using the following API version(s) below, coupled with domain wide authority delegation as described at https://developers.google.com/drive/delegation and are able to see a user's files, iterate over them etc.
google-api-services-drive 1.14.2-beta
google-api-client 1.14.1-beta
My question is this: it appears that the only way to change permissions is by fileId by fileId etc. Instead of having to traverse and iterate over an entire set of user's files, if we just want to transfer ALL of a user's files to another particular user: is there a way in the API to do this (ownership transfer for ALL files) rather than individual requests file/by file?
Also when transferring ownershisp, must the transferee be in the same #domain or can it be another #domain we manage? I read somewhere that you can only transfer to owners in the same domain. Does this still hold true? For instance we manage #myCompany.com and have our corporate account registered under that, however that shell account has several sub-domains within it. We would like to transfer files from users in the sub-domains to a central user in the #myCompany domain.
You need to change permissions file by file, there is no updateAll type of functionality at the moment.
You cant transfer the ownership to another domain's user. Ownership can only be transferred to another user in the same domain as the current owner.
This answer doesn't directly answer your question, but it could be helpful for both you and future visitors.
As of now, you can mass transfer files to new users with Google's new Admin console. It doesn't let you filter for specific folders, but it does allow you to transfer all of one user's Drive files to a second user.
I know you were trying to create something which uses the API to iterate through folders and files, and you probably have a very specific use-case in mind. However, in the case where you have employees leaving, or you need to transfer everything, using the following method is fast and simple.
Open the Google Admin console
Go to Google Apps > Drive
Click on "Transfer ownership"
Fill out both user fields and submit
This process will even email both users once the process is completed.
You can do this with a single call to the Data Transfer API
Exactly what is needed but only with API!
Open the Google Admin console
Go to Google Apps > Drive
Click on "Transfer ownership"
Fill out both user fields and submit
This process will even email both users once the process is completed.
If this is not possible via API calls, then there is no point deleting a user using API.

Drive API - External Sharing

I know that the Google Drive SDK does not show the user email in the value field of the permission object due to privacy concerns. If we don't have that user email address, is there a way to know if a document is shared with anyone outside of the domain?
Also, wouldn't retrieving permissions using the document's owner authentication allow us to see that email address?
You cannot do that using Drive API. However, you can achieve this result using the old and deprecated Gdata DocumentList API

value attribute for Permissions Resource not populated in responses

Looking at:
https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/permissions#resource
the values attribute which contains the email address value for the ACL is not returned by the API. It's not clear why the value isn't returned, I assume it's a privacy issue but it means Drive SDK can't support document migration (from one Google account to another) use cases where the old Documents List API v3 can:
https://developers.google.com/google-apps/documents-list/#retrieving_the_acl_for_a_document_file_or_collection
for now I'm looking at adding both Drive API and Docs v3 API scopes for my project and just using the Docs API call to retrieve the ACLs but ideally I'd be able to use just Drive API calls. Am I missing anything? Could a special scope be added to Drive API that allows ACL email address retrieval or is there some other way to handle this?
Jay
Thanks for your question Jay and thanks your answer Ali Afshar!
Unfortunately I do not understand how Google believes the following scenario should work without the email address of the users:
In Documents List API v3 you could copy a file A to file B, retrieve the ACL-information of file A (including the users email adresses) and simply add them as ACL to file B.
With Drive API you can retrieve almost the same Permission information, but without the user email address, which is still required to re-share file B to the same users.
As a sidenote: If you use GAS DefaultService DocsList, you can still receive the editor/viewers with getEditors() or getViewers(). If you manually share a file you can see all email addresses as well.
So if you ask me, the privacy issue is a valuable argument, but it does simply not apply here.
Jan
Since this question was posted, Drive API has been updated to allow permissionId to be sent on permissions.insert() (the id attribute). This allows for migration of ACLs without ever needing to know the email addresses (just straight copy the permissionIds over to the new file).
Additionally:
the permissions.getIdForEmail() API call provides a quick way to get the ID for a given email address
when returning permissions for a file with permissions.get() or permissions.insert(), the domain attribute is included which should help determine if the ACL raises security concerns.
I believe these features cover most use cases where the actual ACL email address retrieval was needed.
You are absolutely correct, the email address is hidden for privacy. It is not right that a user should see the email addresses of all other users that have access to the file. But I'm not sure I quite get the problem. Are you migrating using service accounts, or are users individually authorizing the migration?
The value in the permissions feed is consistent for each user, and that value is available in the about feed for a user. I assume you know the email address of the users, so you can authorize for each of them With a service account, and you can migrate the data.
You should not need the Drive API scope and the Docs v3 API scope, they are pretty much the same scope.
Also resurrecting this old thread, I had the same issue while migrating documents.
A workaround:
- Create a temporary folder
- Insert a permission for the user
- retrieve the id from the permission
Not nice, but works for me.

about service accounts and unregistered users

I have a web app in php mysql, I want to use one google drive account for my app.
Can I use my app's accounts instead of google users for privilages.
I read in SDK I can use service account to login without promting user, but I don't know how to share or give permissions files for custom users.
In api reference I found this:
"The user is not necessarily yet a Google user (e.g. if a file or folder is shared with an email address that does not yet have an associated Google account). Example: 1111459233037698895607".
How a custom user in my app should get a token for own privilages.
I am not exactly sure what you want to achieve here, but if you want to use your own permission system, you can't. You can, however, apply read/write/owner permissions to files to mirror your own permissions.
If I have totally got the wrong idea, please explain.