If you were planning to start working with Drive API by Google any time soon, we’ve prepared a complete guide for you. Today you’ll learn what exactly it can be used for and also how to get an API key in a few steps.
- Google Drive Generate Api Key Free
- Google Drive Generate Api Key Login
- Google Drive Generate Api Keys
- Google Drive Search Api
- Free Api Key
- Google Drive Generate Api Key Management
- Google Drive Generate Api Key Download
Jun 15, 2019 This tutorial will guide you how to apply for a Google Drive API key. You can use the key to generate Google Drive direct download links for image, audio and video. Dec 24, 2019 To work with Google APIs, you will need Google API Console project and Client Id. Which you can use to call different Google APIs. I wanted to integrate Google Sign-In into my website. The following blog post explains how to create Google API Console project, client ID and client Secret.
Contents
What is Google Drive API
Google Drive API is a tool that allows users create apps leveraging Drive cloud storage. By means of this feature you can develop applications integrating with Google Drive and create powerful functionality in your applications.
What can you do using this tool
This option can be used to:
- Download and upload files to Drive.
- Search for files and folders .
- Create complex search queries that return any of the file metadata fields in the Files resource.
- Allow users share files, folders and drives to cooperate on content.
- Combine with the Picker API to search all files in Google Drive, return the file name, URL, last modified date, and user.
- Create shortcuts which are external links to data kept outside of Drive, in a different data store or cloud storage system.
- Form a dedicated folder to store your application’s data to prevent the app from accessing all the user’s content.
- Integrate with the Drive UI which can be used to interact with Drive files.
To successfully work with API you’ve got to get an API Key. Let’s see how you can do it.
How to get Google Drive API key
To generate your API key, your account must be conferred the primitive Editor role on the ongoing project.
Tip: Roles are used to provide a user, a group or a service account with permissions to use the resource. You can get more information on roles here.
To set up an API key, follow these steps:
- Open the APIs & Services → Credentials board in the Cloud Console.
- Pick Create credentials option and then select API key from the dropdown list.
- The dialog screen will demonstrate your new API key.
In case you need to state which web pages, IP addresses or applications can apply your API key, you are free to add app restrictions based on your application type. Mind that you can only set one restriction type per API key.
Using Google Drive API: examples
There are several ways you may apply Google Drive API. Let’s discuss some of them.
Example 1: Drive API upload file
You can upload file data when you create or update a File resource. There are three types of uploads you can perform:
- Simple. It is suitable for quick transfer of a small file (5MB or less).
- Multipart upload. It can be used for a quick transfer of a small file and metadata that describes the file, all in a single request.
- Resumable upload. It can be performed for more reliable transfer, especially important with large files.
This example demonstrates a simple upload request:
A multipart upload request can look like this:
This example displays how to initiate a resumable session to upload a new file:
Most Google API client libraries use at least one of these methods. To get more info on how to use each of the methods, click here.
Example 2: Drive API share file
Each Google Drive file has associated Permissions resources. Each resource identifies the permission for a specific type and role, for example, “commenter” or “reader”. To share a file or folder, the user must have the writer role.
Tip: the complete list of roles and the operations permitted by each can be found here.
The following fields are necessary when creating a permission:
- Type. It identifies the scope of the permission – user, group, domain or anyone.
- Role. It identifies the operations that the type can perform.
Here’s an example of performing a permission with a client library.
You can find more information on sharing files, folders and drives here.
Example 3: Drive API search for files and list files in folder
To search for a specific set of files and folders, you should use the query string
q
with files.lis
t to filter the files to return.The following example demonstrates the format of a query string:
Where:
query_term
is the query term or field to search upon. To look through the query terms which can be used to filter shared drives, cite Search query terms.operator
designates the condition for the query term. You can refer to Query operators to view which operators you can use with each query term.values
are the specific values you are using to filter your search results.
The following example demonstrates how to use a client library to filter search results to file names and IDs of JPEG images.
Google Drive Generate Api Key Free
More examples are available here.
Example 4: Drive spreadsheet API
To create a new spreadsheet, you should use create() method on the spreadsheet collection as it is shown in the example below.
Example 5: Drive API delete file
To skip the trash, you can permanently delete file by ID. The currently authenticated user must own the file or be an organizer on the parent for shared drive files. The code example for this method:
Google Drive API Documentation
You can find the necessary Google Drive API documentation here. It contains all the files on working with API for developers and also on integration of it into your website.
Google Drive API limits and pricing
Google Drive API usage is totally free for users worldwide. Although it has some usage limits:
You can find a link to request more quota in the “Quotas” tab – if you need more than the default. Also, to find more information about pricing, check this page.
FAQ
I’ve got insufficient permission for the Google Drive API. What should I do?
You can use Q&A website Stack Overflow to post your technical questions. Developers usually use tag [google-drive-api] to mark questions relevant to this service.
The usage of Google Drive API is completely free. But there are some limits. You can see the table at the Pricing section above.
You can try a Quickstart option to configure and run your first Google Drive app.
Conclusion
As you can see, working with Google Drive API is not that hard. Getting the API key will take less than three minutes and this Drive API tutorial will come in handy.
Now tell us, do you use this tool? Have you ever faced any difficulties while working with it? Share your thoughts in the comments! And don’t forget to check our blog soon to get more useful guides.
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This article explains how to use the Google Developers Console to authenticate to any of the Google APIs.
Google Drive Generate Api Key Login
The Developers Console can be complicated to get right, and it’s one of the reasons I sometimes have resistance into using one of the Google APIs.
Let’s see how that works, in a very simple way.
This guide assumes you already have a Google account.
Create a new Google API Project
Create a new project, if you haven’t done it yet.
From the dashboard click Create a new project.
Give it a name, and you’ll be redirected to the project dashboard:
Add an API by clicking Enable APIs and services.
From the list, search the API you’re interested in
and enable it
That’s it!
The project is now ready, you can go on and create the authentication credentials.
Create the Authentication Credentials
There are 3 ways to authenticate with the Google APIs:
- OAuth 2
- Service to Service
- API key
API key is less secure and restricted in scope and usage by Google.
OAuth 2 is meant to let your app make requests on behalf of a user, and as such the process is more complicated than needed, and requires exposing URLs to handle callbacks. Way too complex for simple uses.
In a Service to Service authentication model, the application directly talks to the Google API, using a service account, by using a JSON Web Token.
This is the simplest method, especially if you’re building a prototype or an application that talks from your server (like a Node.js app) to the Google APIs. This is the one method I’ll talk about for the test of the article.
Service to Service API
To use this method you need to first generate a JSON Key File through the Google Developers Console.
There is another option which involves downloading a
.p12
file and then converting it to a pem
file using the openssl
command. It’s no longer recommended by Google, just use JSON.Google Drive Generate Api Keys
From a project dashboard, click Create credentials, and choose Service Account Key:
Fill the form and choose a “JSON” key type:
That’s it! Google sent you a JSON file:
This is the content of this JSON file, called JSON Key File:
Using the JSON Key File
The simplest way is to put the JSON file somewhere reachable by your program, on the filesystem.
For example I have a test app under
~/dev/test
, so I put the JSON file into that folder, and renamed it to auth.json
. Then inside a Node.js app make sure the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable points to that file location on the filesystem.You create a JSON Web Token using the properties contained in the file:
and you pass that to any API request you make.
This is an example of how to use it with the Google Analytics API.
process.env.GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS
is better be set outside the program, but I added it in the source for clarity:Use environment variables
This is not ideal in many situations where having your private information on the filesystem is either not practical or not secure. For example if you’re using Heroku, it’s best to avoid putting the authentication credentials in the repository, and instead set them through the interface or console Heroku provides.
Or it’s the case of using it on Glitch prototypes, where environment variables are hidden to everyone except you.
In this case the best thing is to use environment variables, and store the content you need from the JSON file. In the following example, all we need are the
client_email
and private_key
variables set in the JSON, so we can extract those and set them as environment variables, to keep them private.Access other APIs
Google Drive Search Api
I used Google Analytics in the examples.
Free Api Key
The
google
object makes it reachable at google.analytics('v3')
.v3
is the API version.Google Drive Generate Api Key Management
Other APIs are reachable using a similar way:
Google Drive Generate Api Key Download
google.urlshortener('v1')
google.drive('v2')
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