4

How can I get the revision history in Google Docs using a script?

How can I do it? Some ideas?

Peter Mortensen
  • 30,738
  • 21
  • 105
  • 131
Luciano Zancan
  • 145
  • 2
  • 8

2 Answers2

5

It's possible you need to enable the Drive SDK (which you do in the Resources -> Advanced Google Services Menu) and then do something like this

var revisions = Drive.Revisions.list(fileId);
  if (revisions.items && revisions.items.length > 0) {
    for (var i = 0; i < revisions.items.length; i++) {
      var revision = revisions.items[i];
      var date = new Date(revision.modifiedDate); 
      Logger.log('ID: %s, Date: %s, File size (bytes): %s', revision.id, date.toLocaleString(),
          revision.fileSize);
    }
  } else {
    Logger.log('No revisions found.');
  }

To get the file ID use SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getId(); or DocumentApp.getActiveDocument().getId();

Ben Gidley
  • 59
  • 1
  • 4
3

I can't believe it, but it seems to be impossible to get a revision-history version of a Google Docs "file" programmatically. I checked the Drive SDK thoroughly and it seems all we can do is download the Google Document in some other format (probably losing details on the conversion). There's no generating a new Google Document from the revision, or even restoring a revision over the current file.

So, you could "download" a specific revision-history as a docx and then re-upload it converting back to Google Docs (ugh!), and then access normally. To do so you'll have to enable the Drive API v2 advanced service (under the Resources menu). And use the Drive SDK reference (linked above) to get the revision history and do this manoeuvre.

Peter Mortensen
  • 30,738
  • 21
  • 105
  • 131
Henrique G. Abreu
  • 17,406
  • 3
  • 56
  • 65
  • The link in your post is `https://developers.google.com/drive/web/manage-revisions` but following it redirects me to `https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/manage-revisions`. Also you are mentioning the APIv2 but there is the APIv3 live now. I'm not really sure how google doc scripts plug into Google APIs but I suppose this opens new possibilities if you can use the APIv3 which has several endpoints regarding revisions. – Cyril Duchon-Doris Dec 07 '18 at 18:45