Why I am receiving 'Daily Limit for Unauthenticated Use Exceeded' error when trying to call Google Drive Api from my Electron app?

Question

I'm trying to store some of my Electron app's user data into the user's Google Drive. I'm using the 'google-auth-library' and 'googleapis' npm packages and trying to use OAuth2 protocol, but I receive this error: 'The API returned an error: Error: Daily Limit for Unauthenticated Use Exceeded. Continued use requires signup.'

I followed the steps from https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/about-sdk and https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2, so I did this:

• created a new Google API project and enabled the Drive API
• Obtain OAuth 2.0 credentials from the Google API Console ( according to https://github.com/googleapis/google-auth-library-nodejs#oauth2-with-installed-apps-electron , I chose 'iOS' option application type when creating the credentials)
• generated authentican URL (using the client-id and the needed scopes), using 'google-auth-library'
• created a separate brower window for the sign-in and settings some useful event listeners. Setting the window url to the generated auth url.
• obtained the token
• trying to use the token to access the Drive API (not working)

import { google } from 'googleapis';
import { OAuth2Client } from 'google-auth-library';

async function googleSignIn() {
  const oAuth2Client = new OAuth2Client({
    clientId:
      'xxxxxxyyyyzzzz.apps.googleusercontent.com',
    redirectUri: 'com.xxx.yyyyyyy:/oauth2Callback'
  });

  const code = await signInWithPopup(oAuth2Client);

  await oAuth2Client.getToken(code, (err, token) => {
    if (err) {
      return console.error('Error retrieving access token', err);
    }
    oAuth2Client.setCredentials(token);
    listSomeFiles(oAuth2Client);
  });
}

function signInWithPopup(oAuth2Client: OAuth2Client) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const authWindow = new BrowserWindow({
      width: 500,
      height: 600,
      show: true
    });

    const SCOPES = [
      'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file',
      'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.appfolder',
      'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.metadata.readonly'
    ];
    const authUrl = oAuth2Client.generateAuthUrl({
      access_type: 'offline',
      scope: SCOPES
    });

    function handleNavigation(url) {
      const { query } = parse(url, true);
      if (query) {
        if (query.error) {
          reject(new Error(`There was an error: ${query.error}`));
        } else if (query.code) {
          // Login is complete
          authWindow.removeAllListeners('closed');
          setImmediate(() => authWindow.close());

          resolve(query.code);
        }
      }
    }

    authWindow.on('closed', () => {
      throw new Error('Auth window was closed by user');
    });

    authWindow.webContents.on('will-navigate', (event, url) => {
      handleNavigation(url);
    });

    authWindow.webContents.on(
      'did-get-redirect-request',
      (event, oldUrl, newUrl) => {
        handleNavigation(newUrl);
      }
    );

    authWindow.loadURL(authUrl);
  });
}

async function listSomeFiles(oAuth2Client: OAuth2Client) {
  const drive = google.drive({ version: 'v3', oAuth2Client });

// the following lines throws the error
// code snippet from https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/quickstart/nodejs

  drive.files.list(
    {
      pageSize: 10,
      fields: 'nextPageToken, files(id, name)'
    },
    (err, res) => {
      if (err) return console.log(`The API returned an error: ${err}`);
      const { files } = res.data;
      if (files.length) {
        console.log('Files:');
        files.map(file => {
          console.log(`${file.name} (${file.id})`);
        });
      } else {
        console.log('No files found.');
      }
    }
  );
}

Answer 1

Found the reason, I was missing a parameter in my api request, the 'oauth_token'. I was expecting this to work out of the box, since I've passed the oAuth2Client object (which had the token info) to the google.drive() function.

  drive.files.list(
    {
      pageSize: 10,
      fields: 'nextPageToken, files(id, name)',
      oauth_token: oAuth2Client.credentials.access_token
    },
    (err, res) => {

    }
  );