Ames Computers / Walden Systems

I often work with data sets that are populated from a database or spreadsheets to analyze big chunks of data. This requires creation of folders and files on demand that will hold my new spreadsheets and data. The folders and files are created and manipulated dynamically; therefore the data used needs to be cleaned up and removed from my Google Drive when the process has completed. Once I have my spreadsheet or docs built out from my datasets, I automate many of the tasks using my Google Apps Script code base. In our example we will employ the DriveApp Class to manage, create and find files and folders in Google Drive. Since we are working primarily in folder context, we will need to manipulate folders and listing files using Folder Class, which creates, deletes and manages folders and files.

eams working on projects have different levels of permission requirements. Some team members require read only permissions, others require editing rights. If you are looking for read only viewer permissions check out my other blog: Add Viewers Permission to Folder(s)

In this blog we will focus on retrieving various folder properties. We will begin to first dynamically creating a new folder using 'DriveApp Class'. Once the new sub-folder is created, we will use the 'get' methods to gather more detailed information.

To start, we must first search for our parent folder. The DriveApp Class function allows us to narrow down a specific set of folders using a name search: 'DriveApp.getFoldersByName("test00")'. This function returns a 'FolderIterator' object that we will use to iterate over found folders. Using the first folder found in the folder-iterator we will create a new sub-folder.

  var folderNameIter = DriveApp.getFoldersByName("test00");
  
  if(folderNameIter.hasNext()){
    folderObj = folderNameIter.next();
    newFolderObj = folderObj.createFolder("new-sub-folder");
    getFolderProperties(newFolderObj);
  };   

We now have the new sub-folder for which we will gather folder properties that Apps Script allows us to see. Let’s proceed with the next function 'getFolderProperties(folderObj)' that will accept one parameters: 'folderObj' returned from calling the function 'createFolder()';

function getFolderProperties(folderObj) {
  Logger.log(folderObj.getDateCreated());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getDescription());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getId());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getLastUpdated());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getName());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getOwner());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getResourceKey());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getSecurityUpdateEligible());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getSecurityUpdateEnabled());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getSharingAccess());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getSize());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getUrl());
  Logger.log(folderObj.getViewers());
  Logger.log(folderObj.setStarred(true));
  Logger.log(folderObj.isStarred());
  Logger.log(folderObj.isTrashed());
};

Most of the 'get' functions are self explanatory. If you are looking for details behind the function or the parameters to the function you can visit the Class Folder Page.