get filename from google docs using laravel - php

Question

My site has a feature where users can upload a link to their google docs file. What I want to do is list all the uploaded links in a place. While doing that I need to show the name of the file that is associated with the link.
I can extract the file id from the link and make sure the link is of google docs. Now I need to find a way to get the filename from that. I tried going through the google developer API for google drive, but it is for uploading/doing anything only on the authorized docs. My issue here is, my users upload the files manually to their docs which I have no control over. All I get is a sharable link and somehow get the name out of it. In addition, a thumbnail will also help.
I have tried doing this, but it throws error
$url = "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/1G6N6FyXzg7plgEtJn-Cawo5gbghrS8z9_j_cvVqcEDA";
// and
$url = "https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G6N6FyXzg7plgEtJn-Cawo5gbghrS8z9_j_cvVqcEDA/edit?usp=sharing"
$html= file_get_contents($url);
print_r($html);
A dummy link for anyone willing to help: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G6N6FyXzg7plgEtJn-Cawo5gbghrS8z9_j_cvVqcEDA/edit?usp=sharing

Answer 1

Since we are getting the URL to the file, we can do a couple of things -
get the id to the file
get what type of file is that
Before I explain how to do that, it is better to know that there can be 2 possible situations. One the file is a google docs file, the other google drive file. Those both start with different URLs.
$url = explode('/', Str::after(
Str::after($request->url, 'https://docs.google.com/'), 'https://drive.google.com/'
));
I am using 2 Str::after() to remove the unnecessary part from the URL. Then I am using explode to convert the URL into an array.
Since we have excluded the useless part from the URL, we are left with document/d/1G6N6FyXzg7plgEtJn-Cawo5gbghrS8z9_j_cvVqcEDA/edit?usp=sharing in an array form.
So, if we try to do $url[2], we get the id of the file. Also, "document" is also a good thing to note about. I use those to show proper images. There can be 5 different types of them (4 for google docs and 1 for google drive). Those are - document, spreadsheets, forms, presentation for google docs, and file for google drive. I would recommend everyone store these in the database so that extra calculations are not necessary while displaying it.
Now, to answer the actual part of the question. How to get the name. I have created a new model method to handle that.
public function name()
{
$key = config('app.google_api_key');
$url = "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/{$this->file_id}?key={$key}";
$response = Http::get($url)->json();
return $response['name'] ?? 'Private File';
}
Don't forget to add your Google API key in the config file app.php (You need to create one). You can get your API key from Google Developer Console and create a project-specific key. Just to note that this key need not be belonging to the user of the URL.
Also, a thing to note here is that $response returns error code if the file is not set to visible to the public or the file is deleted.