how to find OneNote Notebook object from driveItem with MS Graph?

1
votes

When a OneNote Notebook is created in OneDrive, Microsoft shows a DriveItem with a package facet and type of oneNote. This is exactly per documentation. The driveItem appears to be a link/reference to the actual Notebook - which is stored in a "hidden" folder.

There are also Graph APIs to get a list of all the user's OneNote Notebooks, and you can retrieve a specific Notebook by it's id. The Notebook's id, however, is not the same as it's driveItem.

Given a driveItem with a OneNote package facet, how do I get the id of the actual Notebook so I can retrieve it and its details?

I have investigated pretty-thoroughly using Graph Explorer without success. I can't believe it would be true, but are the Notebook "names" required to be unique? This is the only property I can see (other than owner/user-permissions) that would correlate across the two objects.

1
microsoft-graph-apionedriveonenote-apimicrosoft-graph-sdks

1 Answers

2
votes

The Notebook id isn't surfaced through the DriveItem resource. They're returned by the API so it acuratly reflect the same files returned by the OneDrive UI but they're not meant to be interacted with directly. For working with Notebooks, you need to use the Notes API.

The OneDrive Documentation is a bit more direct on this topic:

Working with OneNote Notebooks

Note: Although OneDrive stores OneNote notebooks, you shouldn't use the OneDrive API to work with OneNote notebooks.

This doc set also includes a more complete description of the Package resource type.

At the moment there isn't a simple method to uncover a Notebooks's id from it's corrisponsing DriveItem. There is one trick you can use, but fair warning, this is not a documented method.

  1. Using Graph Explorer (without loging in), execute the following call:

    https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/drive/items/01BYE5RZ35EU76DRTYZ5DK5DATNBSRPLC7

  2. Look at the eTag in the result: 

    "eTag": "\"{E13F257D-78C6-46CF-AE8C-13686517AC5F},1\""

  3. Now take a gander at the list of Notebooks using:

    https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/onenote/notebooks

  4. The first Notebook returned has the following id:

    "id": "1-e13f257d-78c6-46cf-ae8c-13686517ac5f",

  5. When you look at these side-by-side, you'll notice the Notebook's id contains the same data as the eTag, albeit in a slightly different order ({digit}-{guid}):

    "eTag": "\"{E13F257D-78C6-46CF-AE8C-13686517AC5F},1\""
"id": "1-e13f257d-78c6-46cf-ae8c-13686517ac5f",

I've used this myself but I would be careful and make sure your code used more than just the eTag (I looked at the eTag, the owner, and the name properties). It isn't "supported" so it's possible this could change so comparing multiple properties could prevent a mishap down the just.

Oh, and don't tell anyone. This is just between us. ;)