How to get the file ID so I can perform a download of a file from Google Drive API on Android?

Question

I am working on an Android project and I am trying to make use of the Google Drive API and I\'ve got most of it working but I am having an issue in how I perform a download.

Answer 1

Click with the right mouse button on the file in your Google Drive. Choose the option to get a link which can be shared from the menu. You will see the file id now. Don't forget to undo the share.

Answer 2

In my opinion the easiest and fastest way to get a Google Drive file ID is from Google Drive on the web. Right-click the file name and select Get shareable link. The last part of the link is the file ID. Then you can cancel the sharing.

Answer 3

Well the first option I could think of is that you could send a list request with search parameters for your file, like title="File_1.xml" and fileExtension="xml". It will either return an empty list of files (there isn't one matching the serach criteria), or return a list with at least one file. If it's only one - it's easy. But if there are more - you'll have to select one of them based on some other fields. Remember that in gdrive you could have more than 1 file with the same name. So the more search parameters you provide, the better.

Answer 4

If you know the the name of the file and if you always want to download that specific file, then you can easily get the ID and other attributes for your desired file from: https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/files/list (towards the bottom you will find a way to run queries). In the q field enter title = 'your_file_name' and run it. You should see some result show up right below and within it should be an "id" field. That is the id you are looking for.

You can also play around with additional parameters from: https://developers.google.com/drive/search-parameters

Answer 5

One way is to associating unique properties with your file while creation.

properties = "{ \
    key='somekey' and \
    value='somevalue'
}"

then create a query.

query = "title = " + "\'" + title + "\'" + \
        AND + "mimeType = " + "\'" + mimeType + "\'" + \
        AND + "trashed = false" + \
        AND + "properties has " + properties

All the file properties(title, etc) already known to you can go here + properties.

Answer 6

This script logs all the file names and ids in the drive:

// Log the name and id of every file in the user's Drive
function listFiles() {
  var files = DriveApp.getFiles();
  while ( files.hasNext() ) {
    var file = files.next();
    Logger.log( file.getName() + ' ' + file.getId() );
  }
}  

Also, the "Files: list" page has a form at the end that lists the metadata of all the files in the drive, that can be used in case you need but a few ids.