GDrive API

[jsta]

People are saying that the Google Drive API might simplify the process of bringing back GEE outputs to dapper:
https://developers.google.com/workspace/drive/api/quickstart/python

[jonschwenk]

Thinking ahead here--one of the buggy things I've noticed about GEE exports is that it struggles to put all exported files in the same GDrive directory, instead creating 'my_directory(1)', 'my_directory(2), ... etc. with one or more files in each directory. Just something to consider when/if this gets implemented--assuming the GDRIVE_FOLDER` parameter is where the files actually are might fail.

[rwspicer]

The issue of multiple folders in google drive being created by the GEE_tasks goes away if the folder exists ahead of time. There is some kind of timing issue with when the gee tasks and the folder not being created until the end of the task, so tasks starting a the same time all assume they need to create the folder if its not there.

[jonschwenk]

This looks doable now (it definitely wasn't ~5 years or so ago). Some notes: authentication that's already needed for the GEE API can be reused for GDrive API, so that's nice. The GDrive API can be used to:

• find the export folder (by name)
• list files matching job_name_* (or exact prefixes used as description/fileNamePrefix)
• download them to a local directory
• (optionally) delete them from Drive after successful download (to prevent Drive clutter)

The code should go in integrations, probably in a new gdrive submodule.

Not quite sure how to handle the waiting period (while GEE is cranking) because it can range from minutes to days.

Possibly look at gcs instead of GDrive also?

I probably won't take this on until I see a real need, but encourage anyone else to take a stab at it if they want.