Get metadata about a message attachment

This guide explains how to use the get method on the Media resource of the Google Chat API to get metadata about a message attachment. The response is an instance of the Attachment resource.

When the user sends a message to your app, Google Chat dispatches a MESSAGE interaction event. The interaction event received by your app includes a request body, which is the JSON payload representing the interaction event, including any attachments. The data in the attachment is different depending on whether the attachment is uploaded content (a local file) or is a file stored on Drive. The Media resource represents a file uploaded to Google Chat, like images, videos, and documents. The Attachment resource represents an instance of media—a file—attached to a message. The Attachment resource includes the metadata about the attachment, such as where it's saved.

Prerequisites

Python

  • Python 3.6 or greater
  • The pip package management tool

  • The latest Google client libraries for Python. To install or update them, run the following command in your command-line interface:

    pip3 install --upgrade google-api-python-client google-auth-httplib2 google-auth-oauthlib oauth2client

  • A published Chat app. To create and publish a Chat app, see Build a Google Chat app.

  • Authorization configured for the Chat app. Getting a message requires app authentication with the chat.bot authorization scope.

Get a message attachment

To asynchronously get metadata about a message attachment in Google Chat, pass the following in your request:

Here's how to get metadata about a message attachment:

Python

  1. In your working directory, create a file named chat_get_message_attachment.py.

  2. Include the following code in chat_get_message_attachment.py:

    from httplib2 import Http
from oauth2client.service_account import ServiceAccountCredentials
from apiclient.discovery import build

# Specify required scopes.
SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/chat.bot']

# Specify service account details.
CREDENTIALS = ServiceAccountCredentials.from_json_keyfile_name(
    'credentials.json', SCOPES)

# Build the URI and authenticate with the service account.
chat = build('chat', 'v1', http=CREDENTIALS.authorize(Http()))

# Get a Chat message.
result = chat.spaces().messages().attachments().get(

    # The message to get.
    #
    # Replace SPACE with a space name.
    # Obtain the space name from the spaces resource of Chat API,
    # or from a space's URL.
    #
    # Replace MESSAGE with a message name.
    # Obtain the message name from the response body returned
    # after creating a message asynchronously with Chat REST API.
    name='spaces/SPACE/messages/MESSAGE/attachments/ATTACHMENT'

  ).execute()

# Print Chat API's response in your command line interface.
print(result)

  3. In the code, replace spaces/SPACE/messages/MESSAGE/attachments/ATTACHMENT with the message attachment name.

  4. In your working directory, build and run the sample:

    python3 chat_get_message_attachment.py

The Chat API returns an instance of Attachment that details the metadata about the specified message attachment.