Search for files and folders (original) (raw)

The Google Drive API supports several ways to search files and folders.

You can use the files.list method to return all or some of a Drive user's files and folders. The files.listmethod can also be used to retrieve the fileId required for some resource methods (such as files.get andfiles.update).

Search for all files and folders on the current user's My Drive

Use the files.list method without any parameters to return all files and folders.

GET https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files

Search for specific files or folders on the current user's My Drive

To search for a specific set of files or folders, use the query string q field with the files.list method to filter the files to return by combining one or more search terms.

A query string contains the following three parts:

queryterm operator values

Where:

• queryterm is the query term or field to search upon.
• operator specifies the condition for the query term.
• values are the specific values you want to use to filter your search results.

To view the query terms and operators that you can use filter files and folders, see Search query terms and operators.

For example, the following query string filters the search to only return folders by setting the MIME type:

q: mimeType = 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder'

For more information on MIME types, see Google Workspace and Google Drive supported MIME types.

Query string examples

The following table lists examples of some basic query strings. The actual code differs depending on the client library you use for your search.

You must also escape special characters in your file names to make sure the query works correctly. For example, if a filename contains both an apostrophe (') and a backslash ("\") character, use a backslash to escape them: name contains 'quinn\'s paper\\essay'.

Filter search results with a client library

The following code sample shows how to use a client library to filter search results to file names and IDs of JPEG files. This sample uses the mimeTypequery term to narrow results to files of type image/jpeg. It also setsspaces to drive to further narrow the search to the Drive space. When nextPageToken returns null, there are no more results.

Search for files with a custom file property

To search for files with a custom file property, use either the properties or the appProperties search query term with a key and value. For example, to search for a custom file property that's private to the requesting app calledadditionalID with a value of 8e8aceg2af2ge72e78:

appProperties has { key='additionalID' and value='8e8aceg2af2ge72e78' }

For more information, see Add custom file properties.

Search for files with a specific label or field value

To search for files with specific labels, use the labels search query term with a specific label ID. For example: 'labels/LABEL_ID' in labels. If successful, the response body contains all file instances where the label's applied.

To search for files without a specific label ID: Not 'labels/LABEL_ID' in labels.

You can also search for files based on specific field values. For example, to search for files with a text value:labels/LABEL_ID.text_field_id ='TEXT'.

For more information, see Search for files with a specific label or field value.

Search the corpora

Searches that call files.list use thecorpora of user by default. To search other corpora, such as files shared with a domain, set the corporaparameter.

Multiple corpora may be searched in a single query, though incomplete results might be returned if the combined corpora is too large. If incompleteSearch istrue in the response body, then all documents weren't returned. If this occurs, you should narrow your query by choosing a different corpora such asuser or drive.

• Search for shared drives
• Search query terms and operators
• Google Workspace and Google Drive supported MIME types
• Roles and permissions
• Search for files with a specific label or field value