Using Google Drive as repository for downloadable files in WooCommerc

“Did you look into the above google docs link yet?” I don’t follow you.

The link you’re pasting in. Does it actually serve the download, or show a page.

Yes.

Don’t suppose you can add a dummy download and send the link here?

I don’t particularly want to advertise this yet, but use this for now – link I’ve set it to ￡0 for now so won’t cost anything. Thanks

Sorry, to be clear, I meant an example download/file link, like you’re inputting into the backend. I can try it on my own test site.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7gtBvAtFBwCQUxhcjZlelJjS3M

If you’re using a link like that, thats definitely not direct.

https://lifehacker.com/share-direct-links-to-files-in-google-drive-and-skip-th-1493813665

Using that tutorial I find that now I can use the direct link https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B7gtBvAtFBwCQUxhcjZlelJjS3M to download the file BUT if I put this into the WC product, place the order and then try to download it from the order it only downloads a file called ‘uc’, so back to square 1.

Not direct either https://glui.me/?i=fzb0ml1iywbjqa2/2016-06-11_at_19.10.png/

If you want to use these non-direct links you’ll need to disable ‘force download’ in WooCommerce settings. That will of course reveal the links to purchasers.

Ok Mike. Can you please tell me WHICH 3rd party file hosting providers WILL work with WC for downloadable products? Thanks.

Any which offer a direct download link to the file if you want to ‘force download’.

Any link works if you redirect.

If you want more advanced file protection, you can also use S3 + extension https://www.woothemes.com/products/amazon-s3-storage/

Not sure if you’re still trying to answer this question, Jeremy, but I was asking the exact same question myself. What I found that seems to work is using the URL associated with the “Download Anyway” button on Google Drive. When you press this button in Firefox, a download window appears with the direct download URL. It’s a bit hard to copy from the download window, but you can right-click on the page while the window is open and select “Inspect Element,” then select the Network tab from the top of the inspector window. The second URL displayed under the Network tab should be the same URL as the one shown in the download window. Copy this URL and insert it into your WooCommerce product page. The WooCommerce download link should now directly access your file. The only caveat is that when you download the file through WooCommerce, the file name is an obscure series of numbers and letters (and you can’t see how large the file is). But once the file is finished downloading, I think you’ll find the original file name inside (I tried this with a ZIP file–I don’t know how other files will behave).

On second look, it appears that Google Drive regularly updates the URL I mentioned, probably in order to discourage hotlinking.