Note: This is the legacy Drive API version v2 documentation. For the latestversion, click Switch to V3 in the top menubar.
Drive works on all major platforms, enabling you to work seamlessly across your browser, mobile device, tablet, and computer. Google chrome setup windows 10. Go to Google Drive Let's get started. Save your files and photos to OneDrive and access them from any device, anywhere. Learn more and get 5 GB of free personal cloud storage today.
The Google Drive API allows you to create apps that leverage Google Drive cloud storage. You can develop applications that integrate with Google Drive, and create robust functionality in your application using Google Drive API.
This diagram shows the relationship between your Google Drive app, Google Drive, and Google Drive API:
These terms define the key components shown in Figure 1:
- Google Drive
- Google's cloud file storage service that provides users with a personal storagespace, called My Drive, and the option to access collaborative sharedfolders, called shared drives.
- Google Drive API
- The REST API that allows you to leverage Google Drive storage from withinyour app.
- Google Drive app
- An app that leverages Google Drive as its storage solution.
- Google Drive UI
- Google's user interface that manages files stored on Google Drive. If your appis an editor-type app, such as a spreadsheet or word processor app, you canintegrate with the Drive UI to create and open files within your app.
- My Drive
- A Google Drive storage location that a specific user owns. Files stored onMy Drive can be shared with other users, but ownership of the content remainsspecific to an individual user.
- OAuth 2.0
- The authorization protocol that Google Drive API requires to authenticate your app users.If your application uses Google Sign-in, it handles the OAuth 2.0 flow and application access tokens.
- Shared drive
- A Google Drive storage location that owns files that multiple users share to collaborate. Any user with access to a shared drive has access to all files it contains. Users can also be granted access to individual files inside the shared drive.
What can you do with Google Drive API?
You can use Google Drive API to:
- Download files from Google Drive and Upload files to Google Drive.
- Search for files and folders stored in Google Drive. Create complex search queries that return any of the file metadata fields in the Files resource.
- Let users share files, folders and drives to collaborate on content.
- Combine with the Google Picker API to search all files in Google Drive, then return the file name, URL, last modified date, and user.
- Create third-party shortcuts that are external links to data stored outside of Drive, in a different data store or cloud storage system.
- Create a dedicated Drive folder to store your application's data so that the app cannot access all the user's content stored in Google Drive. See Store application-specific data.
- Integrate with the Google Drive UI, which is Google's standard web UI you can use to interact with Drive files. To learn all that you can do with a Drive app that you integrate with the Google Drive UI, see Drive UI integration overview
Next steps
To get started with Google Drive API:
Try a quickstart to learn how to configure and run a Google Drive app.
Learn how to enable the Drive API within your app's Cloud Platform project.
Learn how to authenticate your users so they can access the Google Drive API with your Google Drive app.
You can use Google Drive API to:
- Download files from Google Drive and Upload files to Google Drive.
- Search for files and folders stored in Google Drive. Create complex search queries that return any of the file metadata fields in the Files resource.
- Let users share files, folders and drives to collaborate on content.
- Combine with the Google Picker API to search all files in Google Drive, then return the file name, URL, last modified date, and user.
- Create third-party shortcuts that are external links to data stored outside of Drive, in a different data store or cloud storage system.
- Create a dedicated Drive folder to store your application's data so that the app cannot access all the user's content stored in Google Drive. See Store application-specific data.
- Integrate with the Google Drive UI, which is Google's standard web UI you can use to interact with Drive files. To learn all that you can do with a Drive app that you integrate with the Google Drive UI, see Drive UI integration overview
Next steps
To get started with Google Drive API:
Try a quickstart to learn how to configure and run a Google Drive app.
Learn how to enable the Drive API within your app's Cloud Platform project.
Learn how to authenticate your users so they can access the Google Drive API with your Google Drive app.
If you want to show a folder from Google Drive on your website or blog, you can use an iframe to accomplish this.
First, get the public URL of the folder. This might light like this: https://drive.google.com/#folders/unX9VBU8x9m66rJdZv (not an actual link). That last bit is the folder ID: unX9VBU8x9m66rJdZv.
The iframe HTML code is:
Google Drive Website Maker
List view
This will show a list of files and folders within the folder you selected. To show a grid view (preview thumbnails of the files and folders), you simply alter the URL and change #list with #grid.
Google Drive Website Host
Grid view
Just make sure the folder is accessible to view, so check your folder permission within Google Drive.