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Get Drive files by path or id

Source: R/drive_get.R
drive_get.Rd

Retrieves metadata for files specified via path or via file id. This function is quite straightforward if you specify files by id. But there are some important considerations when you specify your target files by path. See below for more. If the target files are specified via path, the returned dribble will include a path column.

Usage

drive_get(
  path = NULL,
  id = NULL,
  shared_drive = NULL,
  corpus = NULL,
  verbose = deprecated(),
  team_drive = deprecated()
)

Arguments

path

Character vector of path(s) to get. Use a trailing slash to indicate explicitly that a path is a folder, which can disambiguate if there is a file of the same name (yes this is possible on Drive!). If path appears to contain Drive URLs or is explicitly marked with as_id(), it is treated as if it was provided via the id argument.

id

Character vector of Drive file ids or URLs (it is first processed with as_id()). If both path and id are non-NULL, id is silently ignored.

shared_drive

Anything that identifies one specific shared drive: its name, its id or URL marked with as_id(), or a dribble. The value provided to shared_drive is pre-processed with as_shared_drive(). Read more about shared drives.

corpus

Character, specifying which collections of items to search. Relevant to those who work with shared drives and/or Google Workspace domains. If specified, must be one of "user", "drive" (requires that shared_drive also be specified), "allDrives", or "domain". Read more about shared drives.

verbose

[Deprecated] This logical argument to individual googledrive functions is deprecated. To globally suppress googledrive messaging, use options(googledrive_quiet = TRUE) (the default behaviour is to emit informational messages). To suppress messaging in a more limited way, use the helpers local_drive_quiet() or with_drive_quiet().

team_drive

[Deprecated] Google Drive and the Drive API have replaced Team Drives with shared drives.

Value

An object of class dribble, a tibble with one row per file. If the target files were specified via path, there will be a path column.

Getting by path

Google Drive does NOT behave like your local file system! File and folder names need not be unique, even at a given level of the hierarchy. This means that a single path can describe multiple files (or 0 or exactly 1).

A single file can also be compatible with multiple paths, i.e. one path could be more specific than the other. A file located at ~/alfa/bravo can be found as bravo, alfa/bravo, and ~/alfa/bravo. If all 3 of those were included in the input path, they would be represented by a single row in the output.

It's best to think of drive_get() as a setwise operation when using file paths. Do not assume that the i-th input path corresponds to row i in the output (although it often does!). If there's not a 1-to-1 relationship between the input and output, this will be announced in a message.

drive_get() performs just enough path resolution to uniquely identify a file compatible with each input path, for all paths at once. If you absolutely want the full canonical path, run the output of drive_get() through drive_reveal(d, "path")`.

Files that you don't own

If you want to get a file via path and it's not necessarily on your My Drive, you may need to specify the shared_drive or corpus arguments to search other collections of items. Read more about shared drives.

See also

To add path information to any dribble that lacks it, use drive_reveal(d, "path"). To list the contents of a folder, use drive_ls(). For general searching, use drive_find().

Wraps the files.get endpoint and, if you specify files by name or path, also calls files.list:

Examples

# get info about your "My Drive" root folder
drive_get("~/")
#> ✔ The input `path` resolved to exactly 1 file.
#> # A dribble: 1 × 4
#>   name     path  id                  drive_resource   
#>   <chr>    <chr> <drv_id>            <list>           
#> 1 My Drive ~/    0AO_RMaBzcP63Uk9PVA <named list [31]>
# the API reserves the file id "root" for your root folder
drive_get(id = "root")
#> # A dribble: 1 × 3
#>   name     id                  drive_resource   
#>   <chr>    <drv_id>            <list>           
#> 1 My Drive 0AO_RMaBzcP63Uk9PVA <named list [31]>
drive_get(id = "root") %>% drive_reveal("path")
#> # A dribble: 1 × 4
#>   name     path  id                  drive_resource   
#>   <chr>    <chr> <drv_id>            <list>           
#> 1 My Drive ~/    0AO_RMaBzcP63Uk9PVA <named list [31]>

# set up some files to get by path
alfalfa <- drive_mkdir("alfalfa")
#> Created Drive file:
#> • alfalfa <id: 1ihWThx8L2kRtnhLAIuN9fX2QV1_qnrdR>
#> With MIME type:
#> • application/vnd.google-apps.folder
broccoli <- drive_upload(
  drive_example_local("chicken.txt"),
  name = "broccoli", path = alfalfa
)
#> Local file:
#> • /home/runner/work/_temp/Library/googledrive/extdata/example_files/chicken.txt
#> Uploaded into Drive file:
#> • broccoli <id: 191yJH2qNolW8EG5dtnny-P4AgVOCV_q->
#> With MIME type:
#> • text/plain
drive_get("broccoli")
#> ! Problem with 1 path: path is compatible with more than 1 file
#>   broccoli
#> ! No path resolved to exactly 1 file.
#> # A dribble: 2 × 4
#>   name     path     id                                drive_resource   
#>   <chr>    <chr>    <drv_id>                          <list>           
#> 1 broccoli broccoli 191yJH2qNolW8EG5dtnny-P4AgVOCV_q- <named list [41]>
#> 2 broccoli broccoli 1aNh9_YiunRSwgmopO5hZJgusiZQh1Ii7 <named list [42]>
drive_get("alfalfa/broccoli")
#> ✔ The input `path` resolved to exactly 1 file.
#> # A dribble: 1 × 4
#>   name     path               id       drive_resource   
#>   <chr>    <chr>              <drv_id> <list>           
#> 1 broccoli ~/alfalfa/broccoli 191yJH2… <named list [41]>
drive_get("~/alfalfa/broccoli")
#> ✔ The input `path` resolved to exactly 1 file.
#> # A dribble: 1 × 4
#>   name     path               id       drive_resource   
#>   <chr>    <chr>              <drv_id> <list>           
#> 1 broccoli ~/alfalfa/broccoli 191yJH2… <named list [42]>
drive_get(c("broccoli", "alfalfa/", "~/alfalfa/broccoli"))
#> ! Problem with 1 path: path is compatible with more than 1 file
#>   broccoli
#> ! 1 file in the output is associated with more than 1 input `path`
#>   broccoli <id: 191yJH2qNolW8EG5dtnny-P4AgVOCV_q->
#> ! 2 out of 3 input paths resolved to exactly 1 file.
#> # A dribble: 3 × 4
#>   name     path               id       drive_resource   
#>   <chr>    <chr>              <drv_id> <list>           
#> 1 broccoli ~/alfalfa/broccoli 191yJH2… <named list [42]>
#> 2 broccoli ~/broccoli         1aNh9_Y… <named list [42]>
#> 3 alfalfa  ~/alfalfa/         1ihWThx… <named list [33]>

# Clean up
drive_rm(alfalfa)
#> File deleted:
#> • alfalfa <id: 1ihWThx8L2kRtnhLAIuN9fX2QV1_qnrdR>

if (FALSE) {
# The examples below are indicative of correct syntax.
# But note these will generally result in an error or a
# 0-row dribble, unless you replace the inputs with paths
# or file ids that exist in your Drive.

# multiple names
drive_get(c("abc", "def"))

# multiple names, one of which must be a folder
drive_get(c("abc", "def/"))

# query by file id(s)
drive_get(id = "abcdefgeh123456789")
drive_get(as_id("abcdefgeh123456789"))
drive_get(id = c("abcdefgh123456789", "jklmnopq123456789"))

# apply to a browser URL for, e.g., a Google Sheet
my_url <- "https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/edit#gid=SHEET_ID"
drive_get(my_url)
drive_get(as_id(my_url))
drive_get(id = my_url)

# access the shared drive named "foo"
# shared_drive params must be specified if getting by path
foo <- shared_drive_get("foo")
drive_get(c("this.jpg", "that-file"), shared_drive = foo)
# shared_drive params are not necessary if getting by id
drive_get(as_id("123456789"))

# search all shared drives and other files user has accessed
drive_get(c("this.jpg", "that-file"), corpus = "allDrives")
}