Python: download files from google drive using url

Question

I am trying to download files from google drive and all I have is the drive's url.

I have read about google api that talks about some drive_service and MedioIO, which also requires some credentials( mainly json file/oauth). But I am unable to get any idea about how its working.

Also, tried urllib2 urlretrieve, but my case is to get files from drive. Tried 'wget' too but no use.

Tried pydrive library. It has good upload functions to drive but no download options.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

If by "drive's url" you mean the shareable link of a file on Google Drive, then the following might help:

import requests

def download_file_from_google_drive(id, destination):
    URL = "https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download"

    session = requests.Session()

    response = session.get(URL, params = { 'id' : id }, stream = True)
    token = get_confirm_token(response)

    if token:
        params = { 'id' : id, 'confirm' : token }
        response = session.get(URL, params = params, stream = True)

    save_response_content(response, destination)    

def get_confirm_token(response):
    for key, value in response.cookies.items():
        if key.startswith('download_warning'):
            return value

    return None

def save_response_content(response, destination):
    CHUNK_SIZE = 32768

    with open(destination, "wb") as f:
        for chunk in response.iter_content(CHUNK_SIZE):
            if chunk: # filter out keep-alive new chunks
                f.write(chunk)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    file_id = 'TAKE ID FROM SHAREABLE LINK'
    destination = 'DESTINATION FILE ON YOUR DISK'
    download_file_from_google_drive(file_id, destination)

The snipped does not use pydrive, nor the Google Drive SDK, though. It uses the requests module (which is, somehow, an alternative to urllib2).

When downloading large files from Google Drive, a single GET request is not sufficient. A second one is needed - see wget/curl large file from google drive.

Answer 2

Having had similar needs many times, I made an extra simple class GoogleDriveDownloader starting on the snippet from @user115202 above. You can find the source code here.

You can also install it through pip:

pip install googledrivedownloader

Then usage is as simple as:

from google_drive_downloader import GoogleDriveDownloader as gdd

gdd.download_file_from_google_drive(file_id='1iytA1n2z4go3uVCwE__vIKouTKyIDjEq',
                                    dest_path='./data/mnist.zip',
                                    unzip=True)

This snippet will download an archive shared in Google Drive. In this case 1iytA1n2z4go3uVCwE__vIKouTKyIDjEq is the id of the sharable link got from Google Drive.

Answer 3

PyDrive allows you to download a file with the function GetContentFile(). You can find the function's documentation here.

See example below:

# Initialize GoogleDriveFile instance with file id.
file_obj = drive.CreateFile({'id': '<your file ID here>'})
file_obj.GetContentFile('cats.png') # Download file as 'cats.png'.

This code assumes that you have an authenticated drive object, the docs on this can be found here and here.

In the general case this is done like so:

from pydrive.auth import GoogleAuth

gauth = GoogleAuth()
# Create local webserver which automatically handles authentication.
gauth.LocalWebserverAuth()

# Create GoogleDrive instance with authenticated GoogleAuth instance.
drive = GoogleDrive(gauth)

Info on silent authentication on a server can be found here and involves writing a settings.yaml (example: here) in which you save the authentication details.

Answer 4

This has also been described above,

   from pydrive.auth import GoogleAuth
   gauth = GoogleAuth()
   gauth.LocalWebserverAuth()
   drive = GoogleDrive(gauth)

This creates its own server too do the dirty work of authenticating

   file_obj = drive.CreateFile({'id': '<Put the file ID here>'})
   file_obj.GetContentFile('Demo.txt') 

This downloads the file

Answer 5

# Importing [PyDrive][1] OAuth
from pydrive.auth import GoogleAuth

def download_tracking_file_by_id(file_id, download_dir):
    gauth = GoogleAuth(settings_file='../settings.yaml')
    # Try to load saved client credentials
    gauth.LoadCredentialsFile("../credentials.json")
    if gauth.credentials is None:
        # Authenticate if they're not there
        gauth.LocalWebserverAuth()
    elif gauth.access_token_expired:
        # Refresh them if expired
        gauth.Refresh()
    else:
        # Initialize the saved creds
        gauth.Authorize()
    # Save the current credentials to a file
    gauth.SaveCredentialsFile("../credentials.json")

    drive = GoogleDrive(gauth)

    logger.debug("Trying to download file_id " + str(file_id))
    file6 = drive.CreateFile({'id': file_id})
    file6.GetContentFile(download_dir+'mapmob.zip')
    zipfile.ZipFile(download_dir + 'test.zip').extractall(UNZIP_DIR)
    tracking_data_location = download_dir + 'test.json'
    return tracking_data_location

The above function downloads the file given the file_id to a specified downloads folder. Now the question remains, how to get the file_id? Simply split the url by id= to get the file_id.

file_id = url.split("id=")[1]