'fields' parameter in google document list api

Question

I looked at gdata api reference and many other apis as well. Most of them seem to support the 'fields' parameter to filter out a few desired columns in the resultant xml. https://developers.google.com/gdata/docs/2.0/reference#PartialResponse

This is very helpful at times. e.g. my google document list api results in around 260kB of data for the 35 files i have. I am afraid this would make parsing slow and would create unnecessary load on my server.

Can we expect a feature soon? Is there a way to still have filtered results? I am mostly interested in using 'list all the documents' api - https://docs.google.com/feeds/default/private/full?v=3

Answer 1

Partial response is not supported by the Documents List API, but if you are concerned about the size of the response, you should rely on the Changes feed.

Instead of retrieving all documents, only retrieve them the first time and then query the Changes feed to detect which resources have changed since a given timestamp:

https://developers.google.com/google-apps/documents-list/#detecting_changes_to_resources