Google Drive API call to insert Public Share permissions on Fusiontables causes Internal Error

Question

I have been trying to use the Google Drive API to make a Fusiontable publicly readable, and have not been able to get it to work. I am able to use the OAuth 2.0 Playground to insert public share permissions for other Google Drive documents, but for Fusiontables I get an HTTP 500 error, "Internal Error". Note that I have tried including every scope available under "Drive API v2" and "Fusion Tables API v1".

I'm aware that Google is no longer developing and supporting Fusiontables, but I'm wondering if anyone has found a workaround that allows them to get around this problem? I haven't tried legacy/deprecated versions of the API either.

Here's are the actual API request format and responses from OAuth Playground for a Fusiontable permissions insert (HTTP 500), then a Doc permissions insert (HTTP 200). The only difference between requests is the fusiontable_id or document_id in the Request URI:

Request:

POST /drive/v2/files/<fusiontable_id or document_id>/permissions HTTP/1.1
Host: www.googleapis.com
Content-length: 33
Content-type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>

{"role":"reader","type":"anyone"}

Fusiontable Response:

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Content-length: 180
X-xss-protection: 1; mode=block
X-content-type-options: nosniff
Expires: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:51:58 GMT
Vary: Origin,Referer,X-Origin
Server: GSE
Cache-control: private, max-age=0
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:51:58 GMT
X-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN
Content-type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
{
  "error": {
    "code": 500, 
    "message": "Internal Error", 
    "errors": [
      {
        "domain": "global", 
        "message": "Internal Error", 
        "reason": "internalError"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Doc response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-length: 281
X-xss-protection: 1; mode=block
X-content-type-options: nosniff
Expires: Fri, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMT
Vary: Origin,Referer,X-Origin
Server: GSE
Etag: "M4l5RvCt2StP2jOGfgyJPGdTZTc/dgFZz37LrQjIXplUkmnh3VtemzQ"
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-control: no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate
Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 15:35:56 GMT
X-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN
Content-type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
{
  "kind": "drive#permission", 
  "etag": "\"M4l5RvCt2StP2jOGfgyJPGdTZTc/dgFZz37LrQjIXplUkmnh3VtemzQ\"", 
  "role": "reader", 
  "type": "anyone", 
  "id": "anyone", 
  "selfLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files/<document_id>/permissions/anyone"
}

Answer 1

This appears to be due to a bug in the Drive API. I've located the internal error and have raised the issue with the engineering team. At this time there are no known workarounds.

Answer 2

I have a good news!

I've received an email from googletables-feedback. They says that it should be working now.

My code on Google Client JS API works fine

var setAccess = function setAccessF() {
    gapi.client.request({
        path : '/drive/v2/files/{fileID}/permissions',
        method : 'post',
        body : {
            'value' : 'anyone',
            'type' : 'anyone',
            'role' : 'reader'
        }
    }).then(opt_onFulfilled, opt_onRejected);
}

function opt_onRejected(e) {
    console.log(e)
}

function opt_onFulfilled(e) {
    console.log(e)
}

Answer 3

If you'd be OK with a temporary workaround, inserting Fusion Table public share permission still works with older XML-based GData API. You can check it out here, though beware of the red banner at the top of the page saying 'The deprecation period for Version 3 of the Google Documents List API is nearly at an end. On April 20, 2015, we will discontinue service for this API.'

So if you need to workaround the problem now, that would keep you going till April and then let's hope the Drive API bug gets fixed before that...

Answer 4

Personally, the document I was attempting to add the permissions to had become invalid. This might also be an issue for someone else.