How do I programmatically locate my Google Drive folder using C#?

Question

Similar question as here. Just for Google Drive instead of Dropbox:

How do I programmatically locate my Google Drive folder us

Answer 1

I took Sarath's answer, reworked it to be more resilient (quotes around data source path, null conditional on the reader indexing, additional error checking, "using" so objects are disposed appropriately, added a bunch of comments, and threw in some LINQ (because, linq :-) ).

This particular implementation catches and logs exceptions, and then returns string.Empty on any error...because that's how my current app needs it. Remove the try/catch if your app wants exceptions.

/// 

/// Retrieves the local Google Drive directory, if any.
/// 
/// Directory, or string.Empty if it can't be found
public static string GetGoogleDriveDirectory()
{
    try
    {
        // Google Drive's sync database can be in a couple different locations. Go find it. 
        string appDataPath = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData);
        string dbName = "sync_config.db";
        var pathsToTry = new[] { @"Google\Drive\" + dbName, @"Google\Drive\user_default\"+ dbName };

        string syncDbPath = (from p in pathsToTry
                            where File.Exists(Path.Combine(appDataPath, p))
                            select Path.Combine(appDataPath, p))
                            .FirstOrDefault();
        if (syncDbPath == null)
            throw new FileNotFoundException("Cannot find Google Drive sync database", dbName);

        // Build the connection and sql command
        string conString = string.Format(@"Data Source='{0}';Version=3;New=False;Compress=True;", syncDbPath);
        using (var con = new SQLiteConnection(conString))
        using (var cmd = new SQLiteCommand("select * from data where entry_key='local_sync_root_path'", con))
        {
            // Open the connection and execute the command
            con.Open();
            var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
            reader.Read();

            // Extract the data from the reader
            string path = reader["data_value"]?.ToString();
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(path))
                throw new InvalidDataException("Cannot read 'local_sync_root_path' from Google Drive configuration db");

            // By default, the path will be prefixed with "\\?\" (unless another app has explicitly changed it).
            // \\?\ indicates to Win32 that the filename may be longer than MAX_PATH (see MSDN). 
            // Parts of .NET (e.g. the File class) don't handle this very well, so remove this prefix.
            if (path.StartsWith(@"\\?\"))
                path = path.Substring(@"\\?\".Length);

            return path;
        }
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Trace.TraceError("Cannot determine Google Drive location. Error {0} - {1}", ex.Message, ex.StackTrace);
        return string.Empty;
    }
}