how to access drive as certain google user

Question

I am using appengine( python) and trying to manage a shared google drive directory for certain user. Can my program always access the drive without to go to authorize page, even when I am login as different user. Say I login 123 but I want to access abc's google drive all the time.

Answer 1

You can do this through domain wide delegation for Google Apps users: https://developers.google.com/drive/delegation, though the domain admin will have to add your app for authorization.

If you want to create an app for the marketplace which will prevent the need for a manual setup, you can follow instructions here: https://developers.google.com/google-apps/marketplace/tutorial_python_gae#Integrate-OAuth

I don't think you can access any of Google's API if the user is not logged into your application even if you were previously granted access, at least from my understanding of the authentication methods available.

Answer 2

When the user adds a app engine project service account as a share, you can always access it, without the OAuth2 dance.

Your app engine project service account looks like : [e-mail] You can find information here : https://developers.google.com/drive/service-accounts#google_app_engine_project_service_accounts

def _init_service_account(self):

    if os.environ['SERVER_SOFTWARE'].startswith('Development') :
        logging.warning('Service account not used in development')
        return None
    else :        
        SCOPE = 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive'
        API_KEY = '.....'                                 # GAE
        credentials = AppAssertionCredentials(scope=SCOPE)
        logging.info('service account : ' + app_identity.get_service_account_name())
        http = credentials.authorize(httplib2.Http())
        return build('drive', 'v2', http=http, developerKey=API_KEY)