I’m working on a C# Windows Forms project and need to grab multiple documents from Google Drive. Right now I’m downloading them one by one which takes forever. Is there a way to tell the Google Drive API to package several files into a ZIP archive on their end before I download it to my computer?
I’m also wondering about the best approach for downloading multiple files in general. Should I create multiple background threads to download files at the same time, or is it better to just download them one after another in a single thread? What gives better performance?
Any code examples or suggestions would be really helpful. Thanks!
Google Drive API can’t create ZIP files server-side - ran into this exact problem last year building a document management tool. You’ll have to download the files first, then zip them on your end. For downloads, parallel beats sequential every time, but watch those rate limits. Google’s API will throttle you hard if you get too aggressive. I stick to 3-4 concurrent downloads with solid error handling and retries. Makes a huge difference, especially with bigger files. What worked for me: download everything to a temp folder, then use System.IO.Compression.ZipFile to create the archive. Or if you’ve got the memory, stream files directly into the zip as you download them - saves disk space.
Google Drive API doesn’t do server-side ZIP creation, so you’ll have to download files one by one and zip them locally. I ran into this same issue on a project where users wanted bulk downloads. My solution was HttpClient with async/await for concurrent downloads - 5-6 at once works without hitting rate limits. Make sure you add exponential backoff for retries since Google throws 429 errors even with reasonable concurrency. For zipping, create the archive as files finish downloading instead of waiting for everything first. Way more memory efficient and cuts down wait times compared to downloading sequentially.
unfortunately google’s api doesn’t do server-side zipping, but i found a decent workaround. instead of downloading everything first then zipping, use a memorystream approach - zip files as they stream in. saves a ton of disk space and feels way faster for users. also, don’t go crazy with threading. i learned the hard way that 2-3 concurrent downloads is the sweet spot before you get rate limited constantly.