Google Drive SDK | Hacker News Reader

Google Drive SDK

developers.google.com

137 pointsjeffpalmer35 comments

Google Drive only works with Chrome Web Store apps? Strange. SkyDrive has SDKs for Windows Phone, iOS and Android apps at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/live/ff621310

PS: Yes, I work on the SkyDrive developer platform. It doesn't change the truth.

agreed, such a bad implementation of an api. why the association to chrome at all :(

Google Drive synchs to your local hard drive, and thus works with all of your apps. (Right?)

It ALSO has a Chrome interface to be clever. Picture opening a 1,000 page PDF. If the Chrome PDF Viewer knows how to fetch individual pages on demand, do searches on the server side, etc., it could be very nice for quick previews, etc.

Also, it works great for one content creator (who has the app on the desktop), and a bunch of content viewers (and commenters) who just need Chrome.

My reading of this is that the Chrome Web Store is where apps are listed and users authorize them, but not necessarily that the app has to run in a web browser. The user could authorize the app by "installing" it through the Chrome Web Store but download/use it from a totally different channel.

PS: I work at Google but don't have any inside info on this.

Chrome Web Store is exclusively for web apps. It's essentially Chrome's and Chromebook's App Store.

I understand that. There's no way to have the web store install a native app.

But once you have "installed" the web app, how would the API server have any idea whether a Google Drive API request was coming from a web server, some JavaScript running in a web browser, an Android app, or a remote island in the Pacific that has no electricity via the "IP over Avian Carriers" protocol? It's just HTTP requests with some authorization headers that tie it to your app's identity.

I think its a pretty stupid move. If they really want developers to flock to Google drive, they should not limit the api to their little corner of the world. I'm guessing that they are going to open it to all apps eventually.

How am I supposed to integrate it within a desktop application? Within an Android application?

I must be missing something obvious :)

You aren't, I think this is an effort to give web apps file associations.

Or in other words, give _Chromebooks_ file associations.

https://developers.google.com/drive/downloads

.NET library has not been updated recently, so I don't think it has the Drive APIs in it. Do you see any library that actually has Drive code in it?

You're right, these are just the generic Google API libraries.

There is a sample .NET app for GDrive: https://developers.google.com/drive/examples/dotnet

That's still not right - in step 5 it asks to register Chrome something or another. So it's only to write web apps, not native apps.

It looks like the Chrome Web Store is the centralized place for developers to list apps and for users to authorize them. But once the app is registered/authorized, I'm not sure how the server would have any idea whether requests were coming from a web app or a desktop app.

If this is the case, then a native app could exist Chrome Web Store solely for the purpose of letting users authorize the app to access their GDrive.

Do you see any library that actually has Drive code in it?

https://code.google.com/p/google-api-go-client/source/browse...

There is a simple rest api for that:

https://developers.google.com/drive/v1/reference/

They should have definitely not hidden it so far away.

First thing I found when I looked in. I kid you not.

https://developers.google.com/drive/get_started

> Warning: Apps will not have any API access to files unless the app has been installed in Chrome Web Store. To test an app during development, you must first create a listing and install it.

A) Synchs to your local HD, so your applications don't know or care. (Right?)

B) Application developers can use an SDK to go directly to your Drive account, and do some extra tricks.

It's interesting that on the About Google Drive page, they claim, "Data is inherently social."

Funny, I claim that my data is inherently private. Is it a coincidence that companies that would like to sell my data have the philosophy that my data is "inherently social"?

"Warning: Apps will not have any API access to files unless the app has been installed in Chrome Web Store. To test an app during development, you must first create a listing and install it."

While that does make it feel a bit more secure, that would be a huge hassel for anyone that wants to go stealth at first.

Yeah, this seems kind of bogus - if I'm reading it right, you also have to be creating a webapp to use their API - so hope of implementing a Linux client on FUSE is low at this point.

It seems like a better candidate for a linux FUSE client would be the existing document list API. It works with oauth, and lets you interact with documents.

The Drive API is a way to integrate new editor types into google docs.

> Apps will not have any API access to files unless the app has been installed in Chrome Web Store

I wish google would try being different than apple rather than the same.

While that does make it feel a bit more secure, that would be a huge hassel for anyone that wants to go stealth at first.

Chrome Web Store has an option for testing where you can whitelist authorised people by Google ID. It may not address the whole issue, but it helps.

Ah! Did not know that. Thank you for pointing that out.

It's an API. Inevitably, someone will implement the API so you can run a local version of it, so you can test in stealth mode.

No C or C++ support? :(

Even though I knew about Google Drive, my brain somewhat zoned out for a second and - probably under the influence of yesterdays Planetary Resources Announcement - I thought Google was releasing an SDK for autonomous cars.

This will be a good war.

I wish people stopped flooding Hacker News with the same product. Or even more so, upvoting all five on the homepage alone. It's not like Drive is that great. Actually it very much pales next to Dropbox.

In some areas perhaps it hasn't got some of the functionality that Dropbox has, but it also seems to be scratching a lot of itches which Dropbox isn't even considering scratching.

This is not to say Dropbox should consider. Just I don't think you could say this offering pales in comparison to Dropbox. The app SDK in particular looks exciting.

You're right, but "look, GDrive has an API" is actually kind of neat - this complaint would be more justified on the other threads, IMHO.

That's true, should have looked for a better one to post this at.

It's not like Drive is that great. Actually it very much pales next to Dropbox.

That sounds remarkably sour. Nonetheless, it gets attention because it had been talked about for literally years (back to the latter 2000s). On the day of release it isn't super surprising that it's getting some love.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com