Showing documents from Google Drive on webpage

Question

Is it possible to show the documents from my drive on a webpage? I want the user to be able to click the document and download it, directly from my drive. How would I go about doing this? Thank you for your suggestions.

Answer 1

The fastest and easiest solution is to embed the folder using an iframe (no javascript needed). Obviously this is also the least flexible solution, although you can use CSS to change the layout of the iframe contents (see below).

Google Drive won't allow embedding of the url you would normally use. It has its X-Frame-Options header set to "SAMEORIGIN", preventing use in an iframe. So you have to use the following link, which will allow embedding:
https://drive.google.com/embeddedfolderview?id=DOCUMENT_ID#VIEW_TYPE

DOCUMENT_ID is the id that is mentioned in the normal share link (which looks like https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=DOCUMENT_ID), so you can just copy that from there.

VIEW_TYPE should be either 'grid' or 'list', depending on your preference.

And if you need to change the style of the iframe content, take a look at this solution.

Answer 2

For HTML/JavaScript solution, look at the following links:

https://developers.google.com/drive/quickstart-js
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09geUJg11iA
https://developers.google.com/drive/web/auth/web-client

Here's the simplest way using JavaScript, most of the complexity is in your WebApp authorization. The example below reads files IDs, names and description in a folder you specify.
- go to: https://cloud.google.com/console/project and create a new project "xyz"
- Select "APIs & auth", disable the ones you don't need, enable "Drive API"
- Select "Credentials",
push "CREATE NEW CLIENT ID" button
x Web Application
Authorized Javascript origins: "https://googledrive.com/"
Authorized redirect URI: "https://googledrive.com/oauth2callback"

it will result in:
Client ID: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com
Email address: [email protected]
Client secret: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Redirect URIs: https://googledrive.com/oauth2callback
Javascript Origins: https://googledrive.com/

- in the code below, replace
CLIENT_ID with xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com
FOLDER_ID with the ID you see in the folder address line,
https://drive.google.com/?tab=mo&authuser=0#folders/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

- run it, authorize

I don't know if you read JS, the code can be followed from bottom up, I made is as simple as possible.

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
  var FOLDER_ID = '.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';    // the folder files reside in
  var CLIENT_ID = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com';
  var SCOPE =    //'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive'; 
  [
    'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive',
    'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file',     // for description, 
  ];

  function rsvpCB(resp) {
    var picAlbumLst = '<ul>\n';
    for (i=0; i<resp.items.length; i++) 
      picAlbumLst += (
      '  <li>'+resp.items[i].id+',&nbsp;'+resp.items[i].title+',&nbsp;'+resp.items[i].description+'</li>\n');
    picAlbumLst += "</ul>\n";
    $('#container').append(picAlbumLst);
  }
  function rqstCB() {   //test @ https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/files/list
    var rv = gapi.client.drive.files.list({
      'q': '"'+FOLDER_ID+'" in parents and trashed = false',
      'fields' : 'items(id,title,description)'   //'items(id,title,description,indexableText)'   
    }).execute(rsvpCB);
  }
  // authorization server reply
  function onAuthResult(authResult) {
    var authButton = document.getElementById('authorizeButton');
    authButton.style.display = 'none';
    if (authResult && !authResult.error) {  // access token successfully retrieved
      gapi.client.load('drive', 'v2', rqstCB);   
    } else {  // no access token retrieved, force the authorization flow.
      authButton.style.display = 'block';
      authButton.onclick = function() {
        checkAuth(false);
      }
    }
  }
  // check if the current user has authorized the application.
  function checkAuth(bNow) {
    gapi.auth.authorize({'client_id':CLIENT_ID, 'scope':SCOPE, 'immediate':bNow}, onAuthResult);
  }
  // called when the client library is loaded, look below
  function onLoadCB() { 
    checkAuth(true); 
  }
</script>
<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/client.js?onload=onLoadCB"></script>
<body style="background-color: transparent;">
  <input type="button" id="authorizeButton" style="display: none" value="Authorize" />
  <div id="container">
  </div>
</body>