Google Drive API file lists

Question

What is the best way to get all files contained in a folder using Google Drive API (OAuth2)?

For example, with Dropbox, it's just a simple query to (1 request):

https://api.dropbox.com/1/metadata/dropbox/{folder}

For Skydrive, it is:

https://apis.live.net/v5.0/{folder}

and then querying the upload_location (2 requests).

According to the Google API Documentations, for Google Drive, it's possible to make request to

https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files/{folder}/children

To get data so that data.items containing ID of children. However, with this method, if the folder has n files, then it requires to make n+1 requests (1 for getting lists of items, and n for each item).

I think that making n+1 requests for such basic task is too many. Is that the way Google Drive API designed, or is there a faster method of querying all files (with enough metadata) inside a folder?

Answer 1

You can use the list endpoint and limit results to files having a given parent.

See https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/files/list:

https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files?q='id'+in+parents

This returns much more metaData than the children endpoint

Answer 2

I'm no expert but it looks like the way you've described is the way the API is designed. Just from the https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/children/list it looks like it you are intended to get a List of ChildrenReference's, then from each item in that you get its file ID, then use the files().get(fileID) function to get each file from there.