Hey everyone! I’ve been working with the Python Google Drive API and I’m running into some issues. I want to grab a Google Sheets file and save it as a CSV format.
When I try using the files.get method, I get back a file object but there’s no downloadUrl property. Also, when I check the exportLinks dictionary, I don’t see any ‘text/csv’ option available.
I know you can manually export sheets to CSV through the web interface (File menu > Download > CSV), so there must be a way to do this programmatically right?
Should I be using a different API endpoint? Maybe the Google Sheets API instead of the Drive API? Any help would be great!
Thanks
had this working last week - don’t overthink it! use service.files().export_media() instead of export(). regular export() can mess up encoding, but export_media() handles bytes correctly. just decode with .decode('utf-8') before saving.
To export a Google Sheets file as CSV using the Drive API in Python, you should use the files.export method instead of files.get. The correct usage is files().export(fileId=your_file_id, mimeType='text/csv').execute() which will give you the raw bytes of the CSV file. Keep in mind that this approach only exports the first sheet if there are multiple tabs in the spreadsheet. If you want to export a specific sheet, you can include the gid parameter in your request to specify the desired sheet.
I had this same headache until I found a way cleaner solution.
Yeah, files.export() works like others said, but you’re still stuck writing auth code, dealing with rate limits, and handling all the API weirdness.
Now I just set up an automated workflow that watches my Google Sheets and exports to CSV whenever I need it. Takes maybe 5 minutes to set up, then it runs itself.
It grabs the data from Google Sheets, converts to CSV, and can dump it in cloud storage or email it to you. No more wrestling with API endpoints or figuring out which method to use.
I’ve been doing this for all my exports - handles multiple sheets, scheduling, errors, everything automatically.
Check out Latenode for this: https://latenode.com
I encountered a similar issue a while ago, and it can indeed be frustrating. The key thing to remember is that Google Sheets are stored in a proprietary format, meaning they won’t have a downloadUrl. Instead of using the files.get method, you should utilize the files().export() method with mimeType=‘text/csv’. This will return the CSV content as bytes, requiring you to process that correctly. Also, make sure your authentication scope includes drive.readonly at a minimum to avoid issues.