I have a Rails application with omniauth integration that successfully handles Google authentication. The login flow works perfectly and my app receives the callback properly. Now I want to add a feature where authenticated users can view their Google Docs directly from within my application. What’s the best approach to implement this functionality?
Built this exact feature last year - hit a few snags you should know about. Google’s rate limits are strict, so handle those properly. Cache your docs list for 15 minutes or so since it doesn’t change much - made a huge difference for performance. Watch out for shared docs - permissions can be weird. The Drive API dumps tons of metadata you don’t need, so filter the fields parameter to just what you’re showing. Don’t forget error handling for when users revoke your app’s access through Google’s security settings.
once u have the oauth token, just call the google drive api for docs. don’t forget to include ‘https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly’ in your omniauth scope, and use that access token for making api calls. super easy!
You’ll need to set up the Google Drive API client in your Rails app after auth. I hit token expiration issues when I built something similar - store the refresh token with the access token in your user model. Hit the /files endpoint with q="mimeType='application/vnd.google-apps.document'" to grab only Google Docs. Handle pagination too since users with tons of docs will get split results. The google-api-client gem works well, though the docs are pretty sparse.