I’m having trouble with the Google Drive API v2 changes endpoint. When I try to make a GET request to retrieve change information, I keep getting a 500 internal server error response.
The error response looks like this:
{
"error": {
"code": 500,
"message": null
}
}
I’m using OAuth 2.0 for authentication and all my other API calls to different endpoints work perfectly fine. This seems to be specific to the changes endpoint. Has anyone encountered this issue before? I’m not sure if this is a temporary server problem or if I’m missing something in my request format. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this would be helpful.
Hit the same issue about six months back - turned out to be my pageToken parameter. The changes endpoint gets really picky about malformed or expired pageTokens and throws 500 errors instead of proper 400s. Check if your pageToken’s valid and didn’t get corrupted somehow. Also make sure you’ve got the right OAuth scope - either drive or drive.readonly depending on what you’re doing. Sometimes the API just craps out if you’re missing pagination params. I’d try a basic request without the optional stuff first to narrow it down.
Hit this same issue last year building a backup tool. It’s rate limiting mixed with large changesets. Google Drive API v2 changes endpoint has weird undocumented behavior - throws 500 errors when processing huge change logs or when you’re hitting their internal limits too fast. Use exponential backoff with retries - start at 1 second, double each time. Also make sure your maxResults isn’t crazy high (I stick to 1000 max). Usually fixes itself after backing off a few minutes. Switch to v3 if you can - handles these edge cases way better.
totally get ur frustration! had the same thing happen. it’s likely a temporary issue, try waiting a bit & then reattempting the request. sometimes the service just needs a breather, u know?