I’m working on a project that involves tracking Google Drive files and I need to understand something important about their identification system. When files go through various changes like being renamed, edited, or shared between different users, I want to know if I can rely on their resource identifiers staying completely unique across the entire Google ecosystem.
For example, if I have a spreadsheet that gets copied multiple times, renamed by different people, and moved around various folders, will each version maintain its own distinct identifier? Or is there any chance that these IDs could somehow overlap or get reassigned?
I’m building an application that needs to track these files reliably, so understanding the uniqueness guarantee of these identifiers is crucial for my implementation. Can anyone confirm whether Google guarantees global uniqueness for these resource IDs throughout the lifetime of files in their system?
yeah, file ids stay unique even if u rename or move em. only when u copy a file does it generate a new id. I’ve been using drive for tracking files like this and it works well, so u should be fine!
Google Drive file IDs are globally unique and remain unchanged regardless of the actions taken on the files. Based on my experiences with the Drive API, these identifiers will consistently point to the same file even when edits, renames, or relocations occur. The only instance in which a new ID is generated is when a file is copied, leading to the creation of a distinct resource. Therefore, for your tracking application, these IDs can confidently serve as database keys, as Google does not recycle or reassign them, even when files are deleted.
I’ve worked with Drive API integrations for years, and the ID system is rock solid. Google keeps these IDs as permanent references for a file’s entire lifetime - they’re perfect for database relationships and tracking files. Even when you transfer ownership between accounts or restore from trash, the original ID stays the same. The whole system’s built to handle distributed cloud storage without any chance of ID collisions. You can absolutely rely on these identifiers as permanent references, just make sure you’ve got proper error handling for when files become inaccessible due to permissions or deletions.