The latest version of the Google Drive API is v3. The performance in v3 is better because searches only return a subset of fields. Use the current version unless you need the apps collection. If you are using v2 and your app doesn't use the apps collection, consider migrating to v3. To migrate, see Migrate to v3. For a complete list of version differences, see V2 to v3 reference.
If you need the apps collection, and want to continue to use v2, go to the v2 guide amendment to learn how some instructions in the v3 guides need to be amended for v2 developers.
To learn more about the improvements to Google Drive API v3, you can watch the following video of Google engineers discussing the new API design.
V3 improvements
To optimize performance and reduce API behavior complexity, v3 provides these improvements over the previous API version:
- Searches for files and shared drives do not return full resources by default, only
a subset of commonly used fields get returned. For more details about
fields
, see files:list and drives:list. - Almost all methods that return a response now require the
fields
parameter. For a list of all methods that requirefields
, see the API reference. - Resources that have duplicate capabilities were removed. Some examples:
- The
files.list
method accomplishes the same functionality asChildren
andParents
collections, so they are gone from v3. - The
Realtime.*
methods have been removed. See the Realtime API documentation for alternatives.
- The
- App Data is not returned by default in searches. In v2, you can set the
drive.appdata
scope, and it returns application data fromfiles.list
andchanges.list
, but it slows performance. In v3, you set thedrive.appdata
scope, and also set the query parameterspaces=appDataFolder
to request application data. - All update operations use PATCH instead of PUT
- To export Google Documents, use
files.export
. TheexportLinks
field has been removed fromfiles
. - The
changes.list
behavior is different. Instead of change ids, use opaque page tokens. To poll the change collection, first callchanges.getStartPageToken
for the initial value. For subsequent queries,changes.list
returns thenewStartPageToken
value. - Update methods now reject requests which specify non-writable fields.
- The v2
exportFormats
andimportFormats
fields inAbout
are lists of allowable import or export formats. In v3, they are MIME type maps of possible targets to all supported imports or exports. - The v2
appdata
andappfolder
aliases are nowappDataFolder
in v3. - The
Properties
collection is removed from v3. TheFiles
resource has theproperties
field that contain true key-value pairs. Theproperties
field contains public properties, andappProperties
contain private properties, so the visibility field is not needed. - The
Files
modifiedTime
field updates the last time the file was modified by anyone. In v2, themodifiedDate
field was only mutable on update if you have set thesetModifiedDate
field. - The
Files
viewedByMeTime
field does not automatically update. - To import Google Docs formats, you set the appropriate target
mimeType
in the resource body. In v2, you set?convert=true
. - Import operations return a 400 error if the format is not supported.
- Readers and commenters can't view permissions.
- The
me
alias for permissions is gone. - Some functionality was available as part of the request resource, to instead be available
as a request parameter. For example:
- In v2, you can use
children.delete
to remove a child file from a parent folder. - In v3, you use
files.update
on the child with?removeParents=parent_id
in the URL.
- In v2, you can use
Other Differences
Fields and parameter names are different in v3. See tables below for all v2 to v3 changes.
Some examples include:
* The name
property replaces title
.
* Time
is the suffix for all date and time fields instead of Date
.
* List operations don't use the items
field to contain the result set. The
resource type provides a field for the results (e.g. files
or changes
).