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google-drive-apifile-sharinggoogle-drive-realtime-apimultiple-accountsgoogle-realtime-api

Sharing the Realtime Documents

I have created a playground application. I see that it creates shortcut files in my google drive. I tried to share it with incognito (because I want the doc to be available to anybody and do not know how to create another google account, so I log out into incognito). The shared link looks like https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B00--A0eRH1JLTdsX2t0LWw5RE0. But, incognito fails to view it. It says that "No preview avaialable" in what is supposed to be its google drive window and offers the log in

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The key problem that I see is that playground application has the following structure, which comes from the official demo

function onAuthorized() {
    function onFileLoaded(doc) {display(doc)}
    gapi.drive.realtime.load(your_doc_id, onFileLoaded)
}

// App entry point -- start by authorization
gapi.auth.authorize({
    client_id: rtClientId, scope: ['install', 'file'],
    //user_id: userId,
    immediate: !popup }, onAuthorized
);

which seems to demand authentication in the first place before displaying any doc. Authorization is problematic for the unsigned mode that I want my app to be available. I want to share a file and make it viewable to the general public, without the need to log in. This raises a question if incognito users are able to view or event edit my document. I also concern how to copy the doc to their account if desired: one thing is when you have created a file on your drive with my app, you can probably list the files and use drive.copy api to copy desired one and other thing when you want to copy a file that is not available on your google drive and the only thing you have is its id.

BTW, can you tell me which account to use for non-incognito testing from another account? If I create the document in one account I want to see how it looks/accessible from the another.

Solution

  • The Realtime API does not provide anonymous access by default. See https://developers.google.com/google-apps/realtime/faq#does_the_realtime_api_support_anonymous_access