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I have a Google drive URL that is

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0AwlAqojdgwiCNW5ZcnZYSXB0eW8/image?pagenumber=1&w=800

Can someone please explain what the part

0AwlAqojdgwiCNW5ZcnZYSXB0eW8/image?pagenumber=1&w=800

means? I am building something that connects to the Google Drive but I need to know what this part is. EDIT: The initial 13 characters are the user id constant for a user

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  • 1
    There is an SDK for Google Drive. Perhaps this is question is better for the developer forums there.
    – ale
    Jan 9, 2014 at 19:19
  • There is no such thing that a "id constant for a user"
    – Rubén
    Jul 20, 2015 at 23:42

2 Answers 2

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Short Answer

The part after the last slash of a file's URL that is hosted in Google Drive of Google Editors could vary depending if the URL has the purpose to be used to share the file to someone without a Google account, the format to be used to publish the content to the web and include parameters to modify how the content will be published or displayed.

Additional details

Instead of filenames for URL Google Drive and Docs editors uses a "file key" so if the user changes the filename the URL still works.

The "file key" is between the last two slashes [/]. The part after the last slash could vary depending if the URL has the purpose to share the file to someone without a Google account, the format to be used i.e. to publish the content to the web and include parameters to modify how the content will be published or displayed.

/view for previewing a file in a web browser
/preview for embedding file in a HTML web page
/edit for editing a file
/pubhtml is used when a document, spreadsheet or slide is published to the web.
/pub is used when a drawing is published as image

Notes

For web site hosting is possible to use filenames in URLs but this require that file are in a public folder.

References

Publish web site content - Drive REST API

-1

That is called encryption. It is purposely done so for better security, like for example say you had a master username & password list in Google drive and it would look like this:

https://docs.google.com/file/master-username&password-list.doc 

Then one would easily want to get a hold of that file. Although not all Google drive files are yet fully encrypted, this is a false Window feature that already hides the basic title information. The URL also appears to stay the same regardless of Public or Private sharing between users. However, you can use hyperlinks to shorten the URL into a word.

Here you can read more about Google Drive encryption.

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  • Yeah @Rudolph I agree but I don't think its encryption. It's some kind of hashing where the initial 13 characters are User id and the rest are some thing else. I want to know what else?
    – coder
    Dec 10, 2013 at 15:05

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