File not found error Google Drive API

Question

I am using the Drive REST API to download a file. I am making a GET request using the file id and I get a file not found exception.

{
 "error": {
  "errors": [
   {
    "domain": "global",
    "reason": "notFound",
    "message": "File not found: xxxxx",
    "locationType": "other",
    "location": "file"
   }
  ],
  "code": 404,
  "message": "File not found: xxxxx"
 }
} 

I have also generated the apikey and I am using it in my GET request.The file does exist so I am unsure what I am missing here.

Answer 1

In my case, I simply had not given access to the folder to my service account. Simply sharing it via the web interface solved the problem.

What email address to use:

Check the email address of your service account here:

https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/serviceaccounts?project=NAME_OF_PROJECT&supportedpurview=project

The email address will look like this:

[email protected] 

Answer 2

If you are getting a response like this:

<HttpError 404 when requesting https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/REDACTED_FILE_ID/copy?alt=json returned "File not found: REDACTED_FILE_ID.". Details: "[{'domain': 'global', 'reason': 'notFound', 'message': 'File not found: REDACTED_FILE_ID.', 'locationType': 'parameter', 'location': 'fileId'}]">

And the fileId points to a file on a Shared Drive, you'll need to include supportsSharedDrives=true in your request parameters.

Google provides more detail on this in their Implement shared drive support article.

Here's a small example with Python for creating a copy:

googledrive = build('drive', 'v3', credentials=creds)

copy_response = googledrive.files().copy(
    fileId=TEMPLATE_SPREADSHEET_ID,
    body={
        "parents": [
            report_folder_id,
        ],
        'title': report_title
    },
    supportsAllDrives=True
).execute()

In order to run that, you'll want to mix it into the example code from the Python Quickstart for Google Drive API.