I’m trying to add Google Drive functionality to my Android app but running into some issues. When I worked with Dropbox before, their SDK was really straightforward and had tons of clear examples that made integration super easy.
With Google Drive though, I’m finding it much more challenging. The Gdata SDK they provide seems really bloated and adds way too much size to my app because of all the extra dependencies it pulls in. Plus it feels like working at a very low level without much guidance.
I’ve been searching for good tutorial examples or sample projects that show how to properly implement file upload and download features with Google Drive on Android, but haven’t found much that’s helpful. Does anyone know of any demo apps I could study or have basic code snippets for handling file operations? Just need something to point me in the right direction.
I went through the same struggle about a year ago and ended up ditching the GData SDK entirely. What worked for me was using the Google Drive API v3 with the Google API Client Library for Android - much cleaner than the old approach. The key is to focus on the DriveResourceApi rather than trying to work with the full SDK. You’ll want to handle authentication through GoogleSignIn first, then use simple HTTP requests for file operations. The official Android quickstart sample on GitHub actually has decent upload/download examples once you dig into the source code, though the documentation could definitely be better. File operations become pretty straightforward once you get the auth flow working properly.
Had similar headaches when I tackled this last year. The trick that saved me was switching to the newer Google Drive API v3 with simple REST calls instead of wrestling with that heavy SDK. I used OkHttp for the networking layer and handled OAuth2 through the standard Google Sign-In library. The app size dropped significantly and the code became much more maintainable. One thing that really helped was looking at the Google Drive Android API demos repository on GitHub - they have working examples for basic CRUD operations that you can adapt. The upload process becomes pretty straightforward once you get the multipart request format right. Authentication was the trickiest part but once that clicks everything else falls into place.
honestly the google drive rest api is way cleaner than the old gdata stuff. just use retrofit or volley for http calls and handle oauth2 yourself - much lighter footprint. theres a decent quickstart guide in googles docs that walks thru basic file ops but its kinda buried