I’m working on a PHP web app that connects with Google Drive and Google Docs. Everything works great, but now I need to figure out how to get the templates that show up when you click ‘create from template’ in Google Docs.
I’ve been looking through the API docs but can’t find anything about fetching template lists. When I do regular file searches through the API, I can see templates mixed in with regular files, but I need a way to filter them out or identify which ones are actually templates.
Has anyone worked with Google Docs templates through their API before? Any ideas on how to pull just the templates or tell them apart from normal documents?
yeah, i found the same thing! it’s kinda tricky. checking the capabilities field is smart, also watched out for the webViewLink. those patterns can help separate templates from regular docs. google’s docs can be a pain sometimes, good luck!
The Google Drive API doesn’t have a direct way to grab templates, which is pretty annoying. I got around this by digging into the file properties. Templates usually have specific traits you can spot programmatically. Check the isAppAuthorized property and peek at the owners field - public templates often show Google as the owner. You could also use the q parameter in your files.list request with something like ‘template’ in name or see if files are sitting in shared drives full of template collections. I noticed templates typically have different sharing permissions than regular docs. You’ll probably need to mix several filtering approaches since there’s no single bulletproof way to identify templates in the API response.
I experienced a similar issue while working on a document automation solution with Google Drive API. There isn’t a dedicated endpoint for templates, but you can work around this limitation. By using the files.list method with specific query parameters, such as filtering for ‘template’ in the filename or targeting MIME types like application/vnd.google-apps.document, you can retrieve the templates. In my case, I noticed that templates have distinctive metadata. Look into the parents field, as templates are often located in specific galleries with recognizable IDs. Additionally, the shared property indicates public templates. If you analyze network requests in your browser while navigating Google Docs, you can uncover undocumented query parameters that might also assist you.