I’m trying to build an Android app that needs to access Google Docs files. I want to get a list of all documents from a user’s Google Docs account and display them in my app.
I’ve been looking into different approaches but I’m running into issues. It seems like the standard Java client library doesn’t work well with Android development. I’m not sure if there are Android-specific libraries or if I need to use REST API calls directly.
Has anyone successfully implemented this feature? What’s the best way to authenticate users and fetch their document list? I’d really appreciate any guidance or code examples.
Any help would be great!
Dealt with this same issue six months ago - super confusing at first. The breakthrough was realizing Google Docs are just Drive files with specific MIME types. I used Google Drive API v3 with the Android Google API Client library. The tricky bit? Getting the query parameters right. You’ve got to filter by mimeType=‘application/vnd.google-apps.document’ or you’ll get every Drive file. For auth, Google Sign-In for Android works great - handles OAuth automatically. Watch out for pagination though - the API sends results in batches and the docs don’t explain this well. Once auth is sorted, the API calls are pretty simple.
for sure! I found using the Google drive api pretty effective. Retrofit makes it easy to handle requests, and Google Sign-In for auth is a great combo for a smooth user experience. good luck!
I did something similar last year and got confused at first too. Here’s the thing - Google Docs files live in Google Drive, so you need the Google Drive API v3. There’s no separate Google Docs API. The Android Google API Client library works great for this. Set up OAuth 2.0 through Google Play Services, then use the Drive API with mimeType filters to grab just the Google Docs files. Once you configure it right, the auth flow handles tokens automatically. Just make sure you request the right scopes in your API console.