how to implement makeCopy of shared file

[SebastianMoyano]

I want to implement the makeCopy function that it can be used in google script, i tried doing this

file2 = drive.CreateFile({'id': '1ybbyhC2BhypcMnttQHFcHA1pCCbLLLLv'})
file2.Upload() # Files.insert()

But it didn't work, also how can I upload a specific file?
thanks in advance!

[shcheklein]

@SebastianMoyano just to clarify - you want to copy a file? (I'm not sure if makeCopy or shared are important here).

Unfortunately, I don't see a https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v2/reference/files/copy implementation at the moment - we can make this ticket a feature request, it looks like it's not that hard to add. I can guide someone through the PR process.

It's possible to move the file though (just in case that would be enough).

[SebastianMoyano]

Yes, sorry for the late response, what I was looking for was to make a copy of a drive file which I have access to, this is because sometimes files that have been shared get a limit of downloads and the way to get around that is to make a copy into your own drive, at least for this specific situation it would help to have a feature like that.
Cheers!

[abubelinha]

You should take a look to the code, comments and links in this issue of the original PyDrive project.
That implementation works well.

I take the opportunity to ask if there is at least a simple documentation page which reflects improvements of this PyDrive2 project over the original PyDrive. It looks like PyDrive2 is not documented at all.
I have some old scripts based on PyDrive and I wonder if PyDrive2 would be backwards compatible or not. I am a bit lost.

[shcheklein]

@abubelinha it should be backward compatible to almost 100%, we tried to keep the same API. I would PyDrive2 for now is about making PyDrive stable and performant- a lot of bug fixes, we also fixed and improved tests and run it regularly on CI, we improved performance of things (e.g. download previously was reading the whole file into memory- this crazy and unacceptable for real cases).

[ikarlmarx]

    try:
        file1 = drive.CreateFile({"id": source_file_id})
        file1.FetchMetadata(fields="*")
        if file1.get("mimetype") == MIME_SHORTCUT_TYPE:
            file_id = file1.get("shortcutDetails").get("targetId")
            file1 = drive.CreateFile({"id": file_id})
            file1.FetchMetadata(fields="*")
            file_id = file1.get("id")
        if file1.get("mimeType") == MIME_FOLDER_TYPE:
            text = "This is a folder and cannot be copied."
        else:
	    body = {
		    "parents": [{"kind": "drive#fileLink",
		                 "id": target_folder_id}],
		    'title': newtitle if newtitle else file1.get("title")
		   }
	    return drive.auth.service.files().copy(fileId=source_file_id,supportsAllDrives=True, body=body).execute()
    except ApiRequestError as e:
        if e.error.get("code") == 404:
            text = (f"Source file {file_id} not exist.")
        else:
            text = e
    except errors.HttpError  as e:
        if e.error.get("code") == 404:
            text = (f"Source file {file_id} not exist.")
        else:
            text = e
    except Exception as e:
        text = e 
        
    print(text)
    return None

[ikarlmarx]

MIME_SHORTCUT_TYPE = 'application/vnd.google-apps.shortcut'
MIME_FOLDER_TYPE = 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder'

def copy_file_remote(drive, source_file_id, target_folder_id, newtitle=None):

[shcheklein]

Fixed by #188

[abubelinha]

Thanks a lot to @simone-viozzi for Copy()!
I tried this with a simple file and it worked.
I have some related questions after looking at the new function:

def Copy(self, target_folder=None, new_title=None, param=None):
        """Creates a copy of this file. Folders cannot be copied.
        :param target_folder: Folder where the file will be copied.
        :type target_folder: GoogleDriveFile, optional
        :param new_title: Name of the new file.
        :type new_title: str, optional
        :param param: addition parameters to pass.
        :type param: dict, optional
        :raises ApiRequestError
        :return: the copied file
        :rtype: GoogleDriveFile
        """

Where it says "folders cannot be copied", is that a limitation imposed by this function simple implementation?
Or is that a limitation imposed by Google API? (so it is not possible to copy folders using a simple API call, as it is not possible to do it using the web interface).

Anyway, to copy a whole folder I figure out the workaround would be creating my own function to create an empty target-copy folder, and then list the files inside the folder to be copied and make successive calls to this Copy function to copy them all.

So, here are my questions:

(1) Do I have to take care of hitting Drive limits (because of too many successive api calls), or does PyDrive2 somehow take care of this itself? If not ... how much time lapse do you suggest to I implement between Copy() calls?

(2) Google Drive web interface permits to download a whole folder content as a zipped file (which contains all files and subfolders, so you can recreate them locally when unzipping). Should I open a new feature request issue, or would this already be possible using PyDrive2 too? (haven't found any examples or mentions to this when searching issues)

(3) What about the opposite? (reconstruct a file structure in Gdrive, starting from a local zipped file) I guess it's not possible (this is the closest example I found in Google, but it uses Colab notebook, not a local Python terminal).

My objective is to find the best PyDrive2 approach to copy structured contents (folders and files inside) from one Gdrive place to another. I am guessing the zip download (2) could be faster, but only if zip reupload (3) and unzip is also possible. Otherwise, option (1) is the only alternative I can figure out.

Many thanks in advance for your suggestions.