Getting hashes of Google Docs documents?

Question

Although Google Docs documents seem to have a unique ID in the URL, I'm wondering if there is a way to get a hash (MD5, SHA1) of a document without downloading it again. Has anyone attempted something similar? Is there some API call I can make?

Answer 1

For files stored on Google Docs, an md5 checksum is provided in the document list entry:

<!-- Given for files only. An MD5 checksum used to verify the contents of this file. -->
<!-- Some old files are being processed. Those files will not have this element yet. -->
<docs:md5Checksum>2b01142f7481c7b056c4b410d28f33cf</docs:md5Checksum>

For Google Docs document, you can use the "Etag" element to check for changes.