Downloading files from Google Drive using libcURL

[RunningRiver]

I need help with downloading files from Google Drive using libcURL in my C++ program. I’m building an app that needs to fetch some files during the first startup, and I thought using Google Drive with public sharing would be a good solution.

The issue is that when I try to download files using the Google Drive download URL, I keep getting redirected. The response shows “Moved Temporarily” with a redirect URL, but when I follow that redirect, nothing happens. It’s weird because the same URLs work perfectly fine when I open them in my browser.

Here’s what I’m working with:

#include <curl/curl.h>

int main()
{
    curl_global_init(CURL_GLOBAL_ALL);
    
    CURL *handle;
    CURLcode result;
    
    handle = curl_easy_init();
    if(handle) {
        curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_URL, "https://drive.google.com/uc?id=fileID&export=download");
        curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0L);
        curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0L);
        curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1L);
        curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1L);
        result = curl_easy_perform(handle);
    }
    curl_easy_cleanup(handle);
    return 0;
}

Is there something wrong with my SSL setup or is Google Drive just not designed for this type of programmatic access? Any suggestions would be helpful.

[AdventurousHiker17]

yeah, google drive’s super tricky. u should add a user agent header like curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36"); - it makes it seem like a browser request.

[Finn_Mystery]

Google Drive has extra anti-bot measures that mess with libcURL downloads. The user agent thing helps, but you’ll also need to handle cookies since Google sets session cookies during redirects. Add curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, ""); to enable cookie handling in memory. For bigger files, Google sometimes shows a virus scan warning that needs confirmation. Bypass it by adding &confirm=t to your URL. I’ve had success combining these methods - usually fixes the redirect problems. Don’t forget to capture response data with a proper write callback function. You might be following redirects fine but not actually saving the file content.

[JessicaDream12]

Had the same problem with automated Google Drive downloads. Google’s servers handle libcURL requests differently than browser ones, even with proper redirects. You’ve got the user agent and cookies covered, but you also need a proper referer header: curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_REFERER, "https://drive.google.com/");. Google Drive uses chunked transfer encoding sometimes, so you’ll need to handle responses differently. Adding curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION, CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1); made things more consistent for me. Watch out for large public files - Google throws up a download confirmation page no matter what settings you use. For production stuff, just use Google’s official Drive API. Way more reliable and you won’t need all these hacks.