Read content of public shared file in Google Drive

google-drive-api

Solution

When using the Google Drive API, after setting the ACL of the file to be public you can directly access the file using the `webContentLink` attribute of the file metadata which should not require any authentication/authorization when the file is public.

This is a feil metadata example: https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/files#resource

This is how to get the file metadata using common client libraries: https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/files/get

Problem

I am working on a Google Drive application. The application needs to read the contents of a publically shared file in someone's Google Drive. How can I do this? Is there an API to achieve this?

Original source