Accesing google drive API for a specific account

Question

I'm trying to access google drive through my android app for a specific account. In addition, I also have sign in with google option, so that users can login to the app through google+ and this will be the google account which play services is using.

However, I want to store some files on a specific google drive account say [email protected]. I tried using the GoogleAPIClient by specifying DRIVE API, required scopes and an account name as '[email protected]', which looks something like below:

serviceClient = new GoogleApiClient.Builder(this)
         .addApi(Drive.API)
         .setAccountName("[email protected]").addConnectionCallbacks(this)
         .addScope(Drive.SCOPE_FILE)  
         .addOnConnectionFailedListener(this)
         .build();
serviceClient.connect();

But, I'm getting an error :

The specified account does not exist on this device. Please choose different account.

How can I connect to specific/static account of google to access drive APIs.

Thanks Saurabh

Could you clarify your use case? Drive is for user owned and managed storage so I'm not sure it fits your requirements. If you want simple, non-user specific app storage firebase.com might be a better option. — Daniel

seanpj seanpj · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-29T13:27:02

It is my belief that you can only use accounts ([email protected]) that are 'registered' on your device (Settings.. Accounts). That means, you have to invoke the Android account picker activity to let the user register the account (it would be a security disaster if your app could access any account only knowing it's email - no password, right?).

If you want to dig into the code that does it, just follow the 'REQ_ACCPICK' constant in this code. It shows you the sequence you have to use. Especially:

Account picker is invoked if the app does not have 'default email' to work with (GDAA.init() failed).
Account picker is invoked by the user from the app's menu so the user can select / add a new account (onOptionsItemSelected()).

It should be noted, that a similar account picker is invoked by GDAA's 'GoogleApiClient.Builder()' (your code above) if you do not pass any email. I believe there is a method somewhere that resets your 'serviceClient', allowing the GDAA builder to re-invoke the account picker again (see clearDefaultAccountAndReconnect()).
I have never used this approach, you may investigate this path further. I think I did not follow this, since I could not retrieve the current account selected by the user. And the knowledge of who the current user is was essential for my application (caching account specific data, etc...)

Good Luck

Accesing google drive API for a specific account

1 Answers