Not able to access my google drive Files with service account

Question

I want to create an application which can add files to google drive and share that files to other user's say [email protected]. this user [email protected] should login to application and then he can see and download all the files available in his drive. currently I have used the google drive's service account for this. I am able to upload the file to google drive and I can share it to user [email protected]. but I am facing following issues.

using email [email protected] i registered to drive and created a project but when i creates a file and shares it to user [email protected] using drive API the file is not listing on drive of [email protected] but when I tries to access that through API I can see the files.
for user [email protected] that shared files is available in his drive and I can see that when I access his drive through web but when I tried to access that through API it shows me no file.

Please suggest me that where I am going wrong. Is it possible for me to do this or not?

for user **[email protected]
$CLIENT_ID='xxxxxxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com';
$SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL = '[email protected]';
$SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PKCS12_FILE_PATH = 'xxxxxxxxxx-privatekey.p12';**

For user **[email protected]
$CLIENT_ID='yyyyyyyyyyy.apps.googleusercontent.com';
$SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL = '[email protected]';
$SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PKCS12_FILE_PATH = 'yyyyyyyyyyyy-privatekey.p12';**

Using user xyz@gmail ID I created a project and using his above clientID,account email, Key file created the file:

function insertFile($service, $title, $description, $parentId, $mimeType, $filename) {
        $file = new Google_DriveFile();
        $file->setTitle($title);
        $file->setDescription($description);
        $file->setMimeType($mimeType);
        // Set the parent folder.
        if ($parentId != null) {
            $parent = new ParentReference();
            $parent->setId($parentId);
            $file->setParents(array($parent));
        }
        try {
            $data = file_get_contents($filename);
            $createdFile = $service->files->insert($file, array(
                'data' => $data,
                'mimeType' => $mimeType,
                'convert' =>TRUE,
                    )
            );
            $fileID = $createdFile->getId();
            return $fileID;
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            print "An error occurred: " . $e->getMessage();
            exit();
        }
    }

Shared This file to user [email protected] with Following code:

function insertPermission($service, $fileId, $value='[email protected]', $type = 'user', $role = 'writer') {
    $newPermission = new Google_Permission();
    $newPermission->setValue($value);
    $newPermission->setType($type);
    $newPermission->setRole($role);
    try {
        return $service->permissions->insert($fileId, $newPermission);
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        print "An error occurred: " . $e->getMessage();
    }
    return NULL;
}

Then to check the files for [email protected] I logged in using his clientID,accountEmail and private key file and for retriving the files I used below code

function retrieveAllFiles($service) {
    $result = array();
    $pageToken = NULL;
    do {
        try {
            $parameters = array();
            if ($pageToken) {
                $parameters['pageToken'] = $pageToken;
            }
            $files = $service->files->listFiles($parameters);
            $result = array_merge($result, $files->getItems());
            $pageToken = $files->getNextPageToken();
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            print "An error occurred: " . $e->getMessage();
            $pageToken = NULL;
        }
    } while ($pageToken);
    return $result;
}

What I think that I am using different clientID, accountEmail and private key because of this the files are not listing to [email protected] but if I use the same clientID,account email and private key of [email protected] then I will get all the file. What I want is only some files will be shared to [email protected] and he should get only those files.

See my answer below. Even though a user account created the service account, that does not give the user account any special rights to the service accounts files. Depending on your goals here, you may be over-complicating things by using service accounts in the first place, you could just authorize as the actual users. — Jay Lee
can you tell me that how can i authorize the actual user. I did google but no success. — user3247719

Jay Lee Jay Lee · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-29T19:21:17

That's because [email protected] doesn't own or have any access to the file. The service account created the file and is thus the owner. You shared the file with [email protected] so they can see the file but you never gave [email protected] access to the file. (The fact that [email protected] created the Service account does not matter here, the file is explicitly owned by the service account, not [email protected]).
If [email protected] has access to the file in the UI, they should have access when authenticated via the API. Can you show your code here?

Not able to access my google drive Files with service account

1 Answers