Publish Website Content

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Google Drive lets you publish a directory as a website. You can insert static web assets such as HTML, CSS, and image files in a publicly shared folder, and then serve those files directly to users via file names in a relative path. Drive supports JavaScript and other client-side scripting languages, so it's even possible to run a JavaScript Drive app directly from Drive.

The requirements to publish are:

• The folder containing site assets must be public, or "Public on the web." Assets added to public folders must also be public on the web.
• Link to the files contained in the folder using the webViewLink folder ID plus the path to the file.

Creating a public folder

To create a public folder programmatically, you'll need to insert a "file" of the MIME type application/vnd.google-apps.folder (a type reserved for folders in Drive) and then set the appropriate permissions. The account type must be set to anyone, and the role must be reader.

Note: Use the type anyone when setting permissions programmatically, but be careful not to confuse this with the visibility option of "Anyone with the link" in the GUI-controlled Sharing settings. If you set permissions with the GUI, always select "Public on the web."

The following samples demonstrate how to create a public folder using the supported client libraries.

JavaPythonPHP.NETRubyJavaScript

function createPublicFolder(folderName) {
  var body = {
    'title': folderName,
    'mimeType': "application/vnd.google-apps.folder"
  };

  var request = gapi.client.drive.files.insert({
    'resource': body
  });

  request.execute(function(resp) {
    console.log('Folder ID: ' + resp.id);
    var permissionBody = {
      'value': '',
      'type': 'anyone',
      'role': 'reader'
    };
    var permissionRequest = gapi.client.drive.permissions.insert({
      'fileId': resp.id,
      'resource': permissionBody
    });
    permissionRequest.execute(function(resp) { });
  });
}

Using the webViewLink

The key to Drive's built-in site publishing is the webViewLink provided in the files resource. When you insert a public folder using files.insert, the response contains a webViewLink entry that looks something like this:

 "webViewLink": "https://googledrive.com/host/A1B2C3D4E5F6G7H8J9"

Note: A Drive folder is actually a file with the MIME type application/vnd.google-apps.folder. For more information, see Work with Folders.

Once it has this URL, your app can use it to provide a link to contents in the folder. For example, a link to kittens.jpg in an images subfolder could be

 https://googledrive.com/host/A1B2C3D4E5F6G7H8J9/images/kittens.jpg

You can access the hierarchy of web assets in the folder using file names and relative paths instead of fileId values. If you provided a link to anindex.html file in the folder that contains an image link for kittens.jpg, then the page displays the image within the page as expected. If you link directly to a folder that lacks a valid index.html file, Drive displays a simple list of the folder's contents.

Extending basic site publishing

The ability to link to files this way opens lots of possibilities for Drive app developers. Writing a blogging tool, creating a process to publish updates to shared docs, outputting images in a folder in a gallery page — any Drive use case that involves presenting a file in a browser can benefit from site publishing. For a larger-scale project, consider the potential to create a site-building IDE for Drive users.