Automate Google Drive SDK Authorization

Question

I am stuck with a problem.

#!/usr/bin/python

import httplib2
import pprint

from apiclient.discovery import build
from apiclient.http import MediaFileUpload
from oauth2client.client import OAuth2WebServerFlow


# Copy your credentials from the console
CLIENT_ID = 'YOUR_CLIENT_ID'
CLIENT_SECRET = 'YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET'

# Check https://developers.google.com/drive/scopes for all available scopes
OAUTH_SCOPE = 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive'

# Redirect URI for installed apps
REDIRECT_URI = 'urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob'

# Path to the file to upload
FILENAME = 'document.txt'

# Run through the OAuth flow and retrieve credentials
flow = OAuth2WebServerFlow(CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET, OAUTH_SCOPE, REDIRECT_URI)
authorize_url = flow.step1_get_authorize_url()
print 'Go to the following link in your browser: ' + authorize_url
code = raw_input('Enter verification code: ').strip()
credentials = flow.step2_exchange(code)

# Create an httplib2.Http object and authorize it with our credentials
http = httplib2.Http()
http = credentials.authorize(http)

drive_service = build('drive', 'v2', http=http)

# Insert a file
media_body = MediaFileUpload(FILENAME, mimetype='text/plain', resumable=True)
body = {
  'title': 'My document',
  'description': 'A test document',
  'mimeType': 'text/plain'
}

file = drive_service.files().insert(body=body, media_body=media_body).execute()
pprint.pprint(file)

The above code asks user to copy the url to the browser, and then authorize their account, and then again, copy-paste the code and paste it on the terminal. I know storing the credentials and using the refresh tokens, users will have to do this just for once.

But, I don't want so much of user-interactions. Is it possible that user authorizes by just logging in to their gmail account? As in, from my code itself, the authorization link should get open in a web browser without user doing it, and just signs in to his/her account, and that's it, authorization is done, and this login should also happen for just one time, as in, one time authorization, so that whatever is uploaded, gets uploaded on his Google Drive account and maintained. The authorization code should be directly retrieved, and these credentials should be stored as usual and be used and tokens should also be refreshed.

I came across Google Drive Service Account, good thing is that user-intervention is gone completely, but bad thing is that, it doesn't allow the account where the file is to be uploaded. It uploads the file on that drive who has created the app.

Can anyone pls help me out with this? If going with the above code, then what should I be doing to automate the task? If going with the Service Account, what should I be doing to make the app upload the data to the user's own drive account?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm guessing that you have a local Python app (not web app) that you want to be able to access user's Drive. There is no reason why the authorisation needs to be done in your Python app. So for example you could write a small web app that walks the user through the authentication process, then emails you or the user the appropriate strings to paste into the python app.

Answer 2

Did the same for DropBox. You can integrate PyQt's or PySide QWebView (Webkit) where in you can put the auto open the URL. A mix of javascript and python can get the job done.