google-drive-watcher

Watch Google Drive file modifications

Prerequisites

To run this script, you'll need:

• Python 2.6 or greater
• The pip package management tool
• A Google account with Google Drive enabled

How To Use

1. Setup Python on your system
2. Create a project on Google API Console, enable drive api and get client_secret.json for OAuth 2.0 Client IDs (Detailed steps to do this provided in the end)
3. Rename client_secret.json file to credentials.json
4. Move drive-watcher.py , requirements.txt from this repo and the credentials.json file to a single directory
5. Open drive-watcher.py and replace enter_file_id_here with the file ID you want to watch
6. You can also modify duration_in_minutes value if you want more frequent updates, the current default is set to 180 minutes (3 hours)
7. Run pip install -r requirements.txt
8. Save and run drive-watcher.py
9. If you are running the script for the first time, it will open your browser window and ask you to grant permissions to you app. Proceed to grant the permission and then close that window.
10. Bingo! you are all set now. You will receive a system notification whenever the watched file gets modified. Clicking on the notification will open the file link in your default web browser.

Making the notification banner sticky

Drive watcher shows the OS notification so in case you want it to be a sticky alert, you can easily modify that by going to : System Preferences -> Notifications -> terminal-notifier -> Change notification type to Alerts

How to get client_secret.json

1. Go to the Google API console and create a new project
2. Now in the API Library section serach for Google Drive API and Enable it
3. Now from the side menu, navigate to credentials and tap on Configure Consent Screen button
4. Select User Type as External and tap on CREATE button, you will see OAuth consent screen open up
5. Just fill in the Application name field with any name of your choice that you want to use for this script and tap on Save button at the bottom of the page
6. Navigate to the Credentials section from side menu, tap on + Create Credentials button and select OAuth client ID option
7. Select Desktop app as the Application Type and tap on CREATE button, you will see a OAuth client created pop up, tap OK
8. Now from OAuth 2.0 Client IDs download the client_secret.json you just created

Note

It might take a few minutes for the drive API to get enabled on your account so sit back and relax