This guide explains the differences between Google Drive Activity API v1 and v2, and how to change your v1 application to support the v2 API.
Authorization
The v1 API used this scope:
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/activity
The v2 API requires one of the following scopes:
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.activityhttps://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.activity.readonly
Resource names
In the v1 API, identifiers for objects like Google Drive items and users were opaque strings. In the v2 API, these objects are typically referenced using resource names. For more information, see the Cloud API Design Guide .
These identifiers can generally be converted. For example, Drive
items in the v2 API are referenced using the resource name
items/ITEM_ID_V1.
Requests
The request format for v2 is similar to that of v1. Specifically, you can still
request activity for a Drive file or a Drive
ancestor, though note that you must format those request parameters as resource
names by prefixing them with items/.
"Grouping" is now called
Consolidation, and the source and
userId request parameters have been removed.
There are also new Filter options that allow you to constrain the types of activity data returned in the response.
Actions
In the v1 API, the activity type, and the data associated with that activity,
were in separate fields. For example, if the primaryEventType field contained
the value move, then apps would assume that a top-level move field is
populated with the added and removed parents.
In the v2 API, these fields are no longer distinct. The
ActionDetail
message has exactly one field set. It signifies the action type and contains the
details associated with that action. For example, an ActionDetail representing
a move only sets the move field, and that field lists the added and removed
parents.
The v1 API primaryEventType field roughly corresponds with the v2
primaryActionDetail.
Actors
In the v1 API, the returned activity contained a User if the actor was a known
user, and optionally contained a top-level field such as fromUserDeletion for
special cases.
In the v2 API, a richer set of
Actor types is
available, and user.knownUser is populated when the actor is a known user. If
your application needs detailed information about users, it can query it from
the People API by passing the KnownUser field
personName to
the people.get method.
Targets
In the v1 API, targets were always Drive items. In the v2 API,
targets can be other types of objects in Drive. For example,
changes to a drive have a target type of
Drive. The root folder
of a shared drive is still returned (as a
DriveItem in the
root field), but it's not the immediate target of the activity. A similar
concept applies to a
FileComment
resource, whose parent field refers to the Drive item
containing the target comment thread.
Consolidated activity
In the v1 API, the style of response changed when a consolidation ("grouping")
strategy was set. Specifically, when consolidation was turned on, each activity
contained the constituent singleEvents and a combinedEvent that summarized
the common activity among those constituent events. When consolidation was
turned off, the combinedEvent field contained the original unconsolidated
event for each activity. Any of these events could represent more than one
action, such as a create along with a share.
In the v2 API, the style of response doesn't change based on the consolidation
strategy, as the returned
DriveActivity
always contains the full set of actors, targets, and actions.