I’m working on an ASP.NET 4.0 application where I need to automate folder creation and sharing in Google Drive. I have a collection of user email addresses, and for each one, I want to create a dedicated folder and give that specific user access to it.
Is there a way to accomplish this through code? I’m looking for a solution that can handle multiple emails in a batch process. What would be the best approach to integrate with Google Drive API for this kind of automation?
Any examples or guidance on how to set up the authentication and folder operations would be really helpful.
I’ve done something similar for batch folder creation and hit a few gotchas that’ll save you headaches. The Google Drive API works great, but you’ll slam into rate limits fast with batch operations - use exponential backoff. Folder permissions don’t always propagate right away (learned this the hard way), so build in verification logic to confirm sharing actually worked. If you’re sharing with external emails, those users get notifications for every folder - can flood their inbox. Set sendNotificationEmail to false in your permission requests and handle notifications through your own app instead. Authentication with service accounts is straightforward, just make sure your service account has the right scopes configured.
yeah, totally! make sure to manage async requests, or the rate limits will get you. also, remember that users might need to approve the folder shares via email unless your domain delegation is already set up.
To automate the creation and sharing of Google Drive folders for multiple users, you should utilize the Google Drive API v3 with a service account for authentication. This approach is efficient for server-side operations as it eliminates the need for user interaction. Begin by setting up a service account in the Google Cloud Console and downloading the JSON credentials file. Use the Google.Apis.Drive.v3 NuGet package with .NET to authenticate and create folders. For each email, use the Files.Create method to generate the folder, followed by the Permissions.Create method to grant access to the specified user. Keep in mind that if dealing with G Suite accounts, you’ll need to enable domain-wide delegation to ensure permission grants succeed. Additionally, implement error handling and be aware that the API has quotas that may impact your batch processing.