OAuth 2.0 Playground and Google Drive API
By Nicolas Garnier, Developer Relations
Last November,
we
launched the
OAuth 2.0
Playground, a tool enabling you to easily experiment with the OAuth 2.0 protocol and
APIs that use the protocol. We recently added a convenient way for you to test the newly
launched
Google Drive
API by allowing you to open Drive files with the OAuth 2.0 Playground along with
extending the capabilities of the Playground to support file upload and multipart
requests.
The Drive API uses a
per-file
security model. When using the
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file scope you will only be able to
access the files that your app has created or that were opened through the Google Drive
interface with your app. This made it impossible to read any existing Drive files using the
OAuth 2.0 Playground by simply authorizing the Drive scope. To make this possible we are
providing a way to open files from the Drive UI with the OAuth 2.0 Playground. All you need to
do is add the
OAuth 2.0
Playground application to Google Drive.
OAuth 2.0 Playground as a Drive app on the Chrome Web Store
To allow you to experiment with the Drive-initiated OAuth 2.0 flow and open existing Drive
files using the API we've made the OAuth 2.0 Playground installable as a Drive app from the
Chrome
Web Store.
OAuth 2.0 Playground listing on the Chrome Web Store
After installing the OAuth 2.0 Playground you will be able to open files directly from Drive
using the OAuth 2.0 Playground by simply
right clicking on a file in Drive >
Open with > OAuth 2.0 Playground.
Right click on a file in Drive > Open with > OAuth 2.0
Playground
This makes sure the Playground is granted access to the file and then redirects the user to
the Playground after initiating an OAuth flow. The Playground will have the auth code and the
file metadata URL pre-filled so you'll then be able to conveniently finish the OAuth flow and
fetch the file's metadata.
{
"kind": "drive#file",
"id": "0B9-4449Da_xrQlIzdG1TcUJDaTQ",
"etag": "\"apVthTUIHAT9tjL_sIEpc--sy_s/MTMzOTY4MDk…
"title": "drive_logo.png",
"mimeType": "image/png",
"labels": {
"starred": false,
"hidden": false,
"trashed": false
},
"createdDate": "2012-06-14T13:36:29.054Z",
"modifiedDate": "2012-06-14T13:36:29.054Z",
"modifiedByMeDate": "2012-06-14T13:36:28.905Z",
"lastViewedDate": "2012-06-14T15:53:18.150Z",
"parentsCollection": [
{
"id": "0AN-4449Da_xrUk9PVA",
}
],
…
Drive file’s metadata
fetched by the OAuth 2.0 Playground
Specify file content as request body
Along with manually specifying text, you can now choose to send file content as part of the
request body with the Playground. To do that, simply select a file in the
Request
Body.
In the case where you choose to specify both some
manually entered text and
a
file as the request body, we will automatically convert your request to a
multipart request as shown below.
POST
/upload/drive/v1/files?uploadType=multipart HTTP/1.1
Host:
www.googleapis.com
Content-length: 1759
Content-type: multipart/related;
boundary="===============736…
Authorization: OAuth
ya29.1234567890
--===============7362915341248842466==
Content-type: application/json
{
"title": "drive_logo.png",
"mimeType": "image/png"
}
--===============7362915341248842466==
Content-type: image/png
<BINARY DATA - 1526 Bytes>
--===============7362915341248842466==--
A multipart request sent
from the OAuth 2.0 Playground
This allows you, for instance, to create new files on Drive with one single
request to the Drive API file upload endpoint by sending both the metadata of the file and the
file’s content.
We hope the OAuth 2.0
Playground Drive application and the new file upload features will help you during
the development of Drive-enabled web applications. If you have any questions regarding the
Drive API don’t hesitate to ask us on Stack Overflow
and if you’d like to reach out to the OAuth 2.0 Playground team please do so on our Google
Group.
Nicolas
Garnier joined Google’s Developer Relations in 2008 and lives in Zurich. He is a
Developer Advocate focusing on Google Apps and Web APIs. Before joining Google, Nicolas worked
at Airbus and at the French Space Agency where he built web applications for scientific
researchers.
Posted by Scott Knaster,
Editor
