[Bug]: Google Drive "Get File By Id" with Include File Contents returns corrupted binary data

[SonuSV7719]

Is there an existing issue for this?

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Description

When using the built-in Google Drive datasource command Drive Get File By Id with Include File Contents = true, the returned file content is corrupted.

This is reproducible for binary files like PDFs. When the response is converted to Base64 and passed to DocumentViewer, nothing is rendered.

However, when I call the Google Drive API directly using a custom authenticated REST API:

GET https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/{fileId}?alt=media

and then convert that response to Base64, the file renders correctly.

So the same file works with a custom API but not with the built-in Google Drive datasource, which indicates that the datasource is corrupting or incorrectly encoding the binary response.

Expected behavior:
The Google Drive datasource should return the raw binary file correctly so it can be converted to Base64 and displayed in DocumentViewer.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Create a Google Drive datasource in Appsmith.
2. Add a query using command "Drive Get File By Id".
3. Enter a valid PDF file ID.
4. Enable "Include File Contents".
5. Run the query.
6. Convert the response to Base64 and bind it to a DocumentViewer widget.
7. Observe that the PDF does not render.

Control test:
8. Create a REST API with Google OAuth and call:
GET https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/{fileId}?alt=media
9. Convert that response to Base64 and bind it to DocumentViewer.
10. The PDF renders correctly.

Public Sample App

No response

Environment

Production

Severity

Low (Cosmetic UI issues)

Issue video log

No response

Version

Cloud

[linear]

APP-14835

[tomjose92]

@SonuSV7719, is the intent here to retrieve the file content and bind it to the DocumentViewer widget for view purposes?
In that case you do not need to retrieve the contents of the file and convert to base64.
Since its a pdf, you can directly pass the url as https://drive.google.com/file/d/<drive file id>/preview to the Document Viewer and it should work.

[SonuSV7719]

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, the intent is to retrieve the file content and bind it to the DocumentViewer for viewing. However, using the Drive preview URL requires the file to be publicly accessible, which we want to avoid for security reasons. Because of that, we’re looking at a Base64-based approach where we can fetch the content securely and pass it to the viewer without exposing the file publicly.

When we tried using Drive -> Get File by ID with content=true, it returned corrupted content. To resolve this, we used the Google Drive REST API with OAuth and called:

GET https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/{fileId}?alt=media

We then converted that response to Base64 and bound it to the DocumentViewer, and the PDF renders correctly.

[tomjose92]

Got it, will check on this internally and update here. For now you can continue using the workaround

[SonuSV7719]

Ok, thanks!