I’m working on a Java application and need to extract the actual text content from a Google Docs document using their API. I’ve managed to construct the download URL for exporting the document as plain text format like this:
However, I’m stuck on the next step. How do I actually fetch and read the content from this URL in Java? I need to get the document text into a String variable so I can process it further in my application. Any code examples or guidance would be really helpful. Thanks!
Just use Java’s HttpURLConnection class. Connect to your download URL, add any auth headers you need, then read the response stream. I’ve done this with Google APIs before - auth is key here. Open an InputStream from the connection and use BufferedReader to convert it to String. Set the request method to GET and catch any IOException from the network call.
you could use Apache HttpClient for this. just create a client and make a GET request using your downloadUrl, then convert the response to a string. there’s lots of methods to handle this!
I’ve worked with Google Docs API quite a bit, and there’s actually an easier way using Google Drive API v3. Skip the manual export URL construction - just use the Drive service’s files().export() method directly. Create your Drive service object with proper auth, then call driveService.files().export(fileId, “text/plain”).executeMediaAndDownloadTo(outputStream). It handles all the HTTP connection stuff automatically and gives you way better error handling. Just make sure your service account has the right scopes and permissions for the document. I’ve found this approach way more reliable than dealing with HTTP connections manually, especially with larger docs or when auth tokens need refreshing.