I/O data in Google Drive in R

This post shows how to connect to your Google Drive API. A very good tutorial can be found here: trackdown tutorial.

Here are the main steps

library(googledriveR)

Create project in Google Cloud

Go to Google Cloud Console and accept terms of use. Then, create a new project, specify name an accept. The tab opnening the projects is right next to Google Cloud logo.

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Once created, open the project (using the same tab as previous step) and click on the three lines left of the Google Cloud logo, go to APIs & Services and Enabled APIs & services.

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Next, go to enable apis and services.

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Then search for google drive api and click on it. An enable button will appear, click on it to enable. Do the same for Google Docs API.

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Once both APIS are enabled go back to the APIs & Services menu and click on OAuth consent screen. Then click on external option and create.

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Then, you need to create an app name and associate an email with the app, as well as a developer contact. Next click on add or remove scopes. Activate “…/auth/userinfo.email” “openid”, “…/auth/drive” and “…/auth/docs”. Finally, update, save changes and accept.

Back in the OAuth consent screen publish app and confirm.

The next step is go to the credentials menu and create a nuew OAuth 2.0 Client IDs. Go to create credentials, OAUth client ID, select application type = Desktop app and set the desired name. Next, the credential will be shown. Click on download json and save file in your local disk.

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Next, open RStudio locally, install “usethis” package and use usethis::edit_r_environ() to modify the environment, which will be run everytime R starts. In this file save the following: GOOGLEDRIVE_PATH = {location}, setting the location of your json secret instead of {location}.

After this step, save, restart R, and install “googledrive”. And add the following to your script. First time you run the auth configure step, a window will popup asking for permission. Give permissions and you are ready to use Google Drive from R.

library(googledrive)

drive_auth_configure(gargle::gargle_oauth_client_from_json(Sys.getenv("GOOGLEDRIVE_PATH")))