I’m working with the gdata Python library to integrate with Google Docs API in my current project. I’ve set up OAuth authentication properly and it’s working fine. I can successfully upload various document formats like .doc and .xls files without any problems.
However, I’m running into trouble with PDF files. Even though PDF is listed as a supported format in the official documentation, my uploads keep failing. I’m using the most recent version of the gdata library but still can’t get it to work.
I’m also trying to upload .pptx files but I understand this format might not be supported yet.
Has anyone managed to successfully upload PDF documents using the gdata Python client? Any suggestions or working code examples would be really helpful.
PDF upload problems usually come down to file size limits and how the gdata library handles buffers. I ran into this same issue last year - anything over 10MB would fail every time, but smaller files worked fine. The library just doesn’t do chunked uploads well for PDFs, even though other formats work okay. Try compressing your PDF or breaking it into smaller pieces first. For auth, make sure your OAuth scope actually includes the documents feed permission. I also found that PDFs from newer software sometimes break the gdata parser. Running the PDF through an online converter fixed most of my upload failures. The error messages are pretty useless, so I’d watch the actual HTTP response codes instead - way better for debugging.
I encountered similar issues when developing a document management system. The root cause was related to the MIME type. Ensure that you are explicitly setting the content type to ‘application/pdf’ while creating the MediaSource object. Additionally, verify that your PDF files are not corrupted or password-protected, as these can lead to silent failures. The gdata library can be finicky with larger PDFs, so it might be beneficial to start with a smaller, simpler file. Regarding PPTX formats, you’re correct that support is limited, and I found success in converting them programmatically to Google Slides format. Although the conversion isn’t flawless, it works adequately for most situations.
check your gdata version - i had weird pdf issues with v2.0.18 that got fixed when i dowgraded to v2.0.17. also make sure ur not uploading from a file handle that’s already been read, that’s bitten me before. for pptx just forget it - google never properly supported it in the old api anyway.