Create folder in google drive with google-drive-ruby gem

Question

I know that a similar question was asked here, however I still can't get this work since my case is a bit different. I want to be able to create a folder in google drive by using the google-drive-ruby gem.

According to Google (https://developers.google.com/drive/folder) when using the "Drive" Api you can create a folder by inserting a file with mime-type "application/vnd.google-apps.folder"

e.g.

POST https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files
Authorization: Bearer {ACCESS_TOKEN}
Content-Type: application/json
...
{
  "title": "pets",
  "parents": [{"id":"0ADK06pfg"}]
  "mimeType": "application/vnd.google-apps.folder"
}

In my case I want to be able to do the same thing but when using the google_drive API. It has the upload_from_file option which accepts the mime-type option, however this still doesn't work for me, the best result that I got so far was when executing the following code was this error message from Google.

session.upload_from_file("test.zip", "test", :content_type => "application/vnd.google-apps.folder")

"Mime-type application/vnd.google-apps.folder is invalid. Files cannot be created with Google mime-types.

I'll appreciate if you can give me any suggestions.

Answer 1

It's actually pretty straightforward. A folder in Google Drive is a GoogleDrive::Collection (http://gimite.net/doc/google-drive-ruby/GoogleDrive/Collection.html) in google-drive-ruby gem. Therefore, what you may do with google-drive-ruby is first create a file, and then add it to a collection via the GoogleDrive::Collection#add(file) method.

This also mimics the way that Google Drive actually works: upload a file to the root collection/folder, then add it to other collections/folders.

Here's some sample code, which I had written. It should work - with perhaps some minor tweaking for your specific use case - based on the context that you had provided:

# this example assumes the presence of an authenticated
# `GoogleDrive::Session` referenced as `session`
# and a file named `test.zip` in the same directory
# where this example is being executed

# upload the file and get a reference to the returned
# GoogleSpreadsheet::File instance
file = session.upload_from_file("test.zip", "test")

# get a reference to the collection/folder to which
# you want to add the file, via its folder name
folder = session.collection_by_title("my-folder-name")

# add the file to the collection/folder. 
# note, that you may add a file to multiple folders
folder.add(file)

Further, if you only want to create a new folder, without putting any files in it, then just add it to the root collection:

session.root_collection.create_subcollection("my-folder-name")