How to create a static URL link to a file stored in Google Drive

You can upload and store files in Google Drive. With this cloud files service you have the ability to view online your files using Google Drive Viewer. An example link https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7ftIvGKDqYMMWxrbTZmWGxJb0E/edit may look like:

Problem

How to create a static URL links for files stored in a directory on Google drive so you can use them in your HTML code or blog postings.

Solution

For detail instruction take a look at the reference section below. In short you have to first publish the Google drive directory and make it available for everyone on Internet. The link to share will look similar to:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7ftIvGKDqYMTGk0Ujd2QzhYS1U

Please note the last part that represent an ID for your directory that we are going to use below.

With this Id you can now see a directory listing by navigating to:

https://googledrive.com/host/0B7ftIvGKDqYMTGk0Ujd2QzhYS1U/

And to see a single file by adding the file name at the end to the URL :

https://googledrive.com/host/0B7ftIvGKDqYMTGk0Ujd2QzhYS1U/shBrushBash.js

 
$ curl -s -v -o tmp https://googledrive.com/host/0B7ftIvGKDqYMTGk0Ujd2QzhYS1U/shBrushBash.js 2>&1 | egrep '[><]'
> GET /host/0B7ftIvGKDqYMTGk0Ujd2QzhYS1U/shBrushBash.js HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.29.0
> Host: googledrive.com
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Content-Type: application/x-javascript
< Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 00:38:16 GMT
< Content-Length: 2835
< Content-MD5: LXgFS0eQZq4VVenD/ymC6A==
< Last-Modified: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 22:57:22 GMT
< Cache-Control: private, max-age=60
< Expires: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 00:39:16 GMT
< Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
< Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: false
< Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Accept, Accept-Language, Authorization, Cache-Control, Content-Disposition, Content-Encoding, Content-Language, Content-Length, Content-MD5, Content-Range, Content-Type, Date, GData-Version, Host, If-Match, If-Modified-Since, If-None-Match, If-Unmodified-Since, Origin, OriginToken, Pragma, Range, Slug, Transfer-Encoding, X-ClientDetails, X-GData-Client, X-GData-Key, X-Goog-AuthUser, X-Goog-Encode-Response-If-Executable, X-Goog-Correlation-Id, X-Goog-Upload-Command, X-Goog-Upload-Content-Disposition, X-Goog-Upload-Content-Length, X-Goog-Upload-Content-Type, X-Goog-Upload-Offset, X-Goog-Upload-Protocol, X-Goog-Visitor-Id, X-HTTP-Method-Override, X-JavaScript-User-Agent, X-Origin, X-Referer, X-Upload-Content-Length, X-Upload-Content-Type, X-Use-HTTP-Status-Code-Override, X-YouTube-VVT, X-YouTube-Page-CL, X-YouTube-Page-Timestamp
< Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET,OPTIONS
< Server: HTTP Upload Server Built on Nov 14 2013 12:41:34 (1384461694)
< Alternate-Protocol: 443:quic

References

http://googleappsdeveloper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/announcing-google-drive-site-publishing.html
http://lifehacker.com/5964262/host-web-pages-on-google-drive
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14928287/webviewlink-now-returning-404-not-found
https://code.google.com/p/google-apps-script-issues/issues/detail?id=2324
http://www.myblogger-tricks.com/2013/02/how-to-host-your-web-page-content-on.html
https://googledrive.com/host/0B0ap0WDOII5mbjdwajNBMlRoZUU/index.html