Hey everyone!
I’ve been working on a project that involves Google Docs, and I’m stuck on something. You know how each document has its own ID in the URL? Well, I was wondering if there’s a way to get a hash (like MD5 or SHA1) of a document without having to download it again.
Has anyone tried something like this before? Maybe there’s an API call we can use? I’ve been searching online, but I can’t seem to find a straightforward answer.
Any tips or ideas would be super helpful! Thanks in advance!
yea, i’ve run into this issue too. google docs doesn’t have built-in checksums sadly. what i usually do is export the doc as a pdf or something, then use a local tool to get the hash. not ideal, but it works. maybe someone else has a better way tho?
I’ve encountered a similar challenge before. Google Docs does not offer a direct method to generate checksums from within the document interface. This means that while the document ID is unique, it doesn’t represent a content hash.
A workaround is to export the document to a static format, such as PDF or plain text, and then compute its checksum. Additionally, the Google Drive API does provide a md5Checksum for files; however, this property is not available for Google Docs. This limitation makes it necessary to rely on export-based methods for verifying content integrity.
I’ve actually dealt with this problem in a project I worked on last year. One approach we found effective was using Google Apps Script. You can create a script that exports the document content to plain text, then compute a hash of that text within the script itself. This way, you’re not downloading anything externally.
Here’s the basic idea:
It’s not perfect, as formatting changes won’t be captured, but it gives you a content-based hash without leaving Google’s ecosystem. Plus, you can trigger it programmatically if needed. Just remember to re-run the script whenever the document changes to get an updated hash.