I’ve figured out how to fetch a single Google document via command line, but now I need to create a batch script that pulls down all my documents in plain text format. My goal is to combine everything into one master text file afterward.
Right now I’m using this basic approach for individual files:
#!/bin/bash
access_token=$(curl -s https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin -d [email protected] -d Passwd=mypassword -d accountType=GOOGLE -d service=writely -d Gdata-version=3.0 |cut -d "=" -f 2)
set $access_token
wget --header "Gdata-Version: 3.0" --header "Authorization: GoogleLogin auth=$3" "https://docs.google.com/feeds/download/documents/Export?docID=${documentId}&exportFormat=txt" -O /tmp/${filename[$i]}.txt
This works fine when I manually specify each documentId. But I’m wondering if there’s a smarter approach to grab everything at once, similar to how the web interface lets you download a zip archive with all your docs. Should I loop through multiple documentId values, or is there a bulk download API endpoint I’m missing?
Try Google Takeout - it’s perfect for this. Go to takeout.google.com and export all your Drive content at once. Just select Google Docs, pick text format, and download everything as one archive. Takes a few hours depending on how much stuff you have, but way easier than scripting it. I used this for archiving 500+ old project docs and didn’t hit any of those annoying API rate limits. Plus the exported files have clean filenames, so concatenating them afterward is a breeze compared to wrestling with document IDs.
just so you know, clientlogin got deprecated - google killed it years ago. for bulk downloads, i use gdown with a basic python script. way easier than wget and handles auth tokens much better. perfect for mass downloads without the bash headaches.
Go with the Google Drive API v3 instead of the old Documents List API. Auth once with a service account or OAuth2, then hit files.list to grab all your Google Docs in one shot. Loop through the results and export each doc using files.export with mimeType ‘text/plain’. I built something like this last year - way more reliable than the old ClientLogin mess. The API handles rate limiting for you and gives decent error messages when exports bomb out. Just add exponential backoff between requests so you don’t slam into quotas when processing tons of docs.
Been through this exact thing migrating company docs last month. Your approach works but gets messy with lots of documents. Google doesn’t have a real bulk export - you’ve got to list everything first, then grab each doc one by one. What saved my sanity was proper error handling and resume capability. Docs randomly fail during export because of formatting problems or API glitches. Without checkpoints, you’re back to square one every time something breaks. I’d switch to Drive API v3 like others said, but seriously consider rclone instead of building your own. It handles Google Drive auth, retries, and exports all your docs to text with one command. Way less code to babysit than custom bash scripts.
Been there with Google Docs exports. The API works but gets messy with hundreds of documents - rate limits kill you.
I fixed this by using automation instead of wrestling with bash loops and error handling. Set up a workflow that handles the API calls, retries, and file merging automatically.
It grabs your document list, processes files in batches (no rate limit issues), downloads as plain text, then merges everything into one master file. Takes 10 minutes to set up, runs perfectly every time.
No more manual document IDs or failed exports halfway through. OAuth refreshes happen automatically too.
Latenode works great for this: https://latenode.com. Way cleaner than maintaining custom scripts.
yeah, clientlogin’s old news. go with oauth2 tokens to avoid future auth issues. first, get your doc list, then loop thru the ids for bulk downloads, it’s way smoother!