Google Drive API: check if folder exists

Question

I'm using the Google Drive API to try to answer a seemingly simple question: does a folder by a certain name exist in a drive?

Specifics:

Version V3 of the drive API
Python client: googleapiclient

Example:

Given the enclosing drive ID abcdef, does the folder with name June 2019 (and mimeType application/vnd.google-apps.folder) exist?

Current route:

>>> from googleapiclient.discovery import build
>>> # ... build credentials
>>> driveservice = build("drive", "v3", credentials=cred).files()
>>> [i for i in driveservice.list().execute()['files'] if 
...  i['name'] == 'June 2019' and i['mimeType'] == 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder']                                                                                                                                                                     
[{'kind': 'drive#file',
  'id': '1P1k5c2...........',
  'name': 'June 2019',
  'mimeType': 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder'}]

So the answer is yes, the folder exists. But there should be a more efficient way to do this via .list() by passing the driveId. How can that be done? I've tried various combinations all of which seem to throw a non-200 response.

>>> FOLDER_ID = "abcdef........"
>>> driveservice.list(corpora="drive", driveId=FOLDER_ID).execute()                                                                                                                                                                                                          
# 403 response, even when adding the additional requested params

How can I use the q param to query by folder name?

Cvetan Mihaylov Cvetan Mihaylov · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-10T19:22:16

When using driveId and corpora="drive", you need to provide two more parameters: includeItemsFromAllDrives and supportsAllDrives

Code:

response = driveservice.list(
    q="name='June 2019' and mimeType='application/vnd.google-apps.folder'",
    driveId='abcdef',
    corpora='drive',
    includeItemsFromAllDrives=True,
    supportsAllDrives=True
).execute()

for item in response.get('files', []):
    # process found item

Update:

If it's a drive id you're sure exists and you keep getting "Shared drive not found" error, it might be a scope problem with credentials you've aquired for the api. Also according to these Google API documents there seems to a lot of changes and deprecations happening, all related to the shared drives api support. https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/enable-shareddrives https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/reference/files/list

If you keep having these problems, here's alternative solution for you using the spaces parameter:

response = driveservice.list(
    q="name='June 2019' and mimeType='application/vnd.google-apps.folder'",
    spaces='drive'
).execute()

for item in response.get('files', []):
    # process matched item

Google Drive API: check if folder exists

1 Answers