I have a Python script that processes database information and creates CSV files. Right now I manually upload these files to Google Sheets through the web interface.
I want to automate this process using the Google Sheets API v4. I already set up the API following the quickstart guide and can create new spreadsheets programmatically.
However, I can’t find a way to directly upload CSV files to existing or new sheets. The spreadsheets.create method doesn’t seem to have file import options.
Is there a method in the API to upload CSV content directly? I’m looking for a way to take my generated CSV data and populate a Google Sheet with it automatically.
Any code examples or documentation references would be helpful. I’m using Python 2.7 for this project.
Been doing this for years in production. The Google Sheets API v4 approach works, but I’ve found something more elegant - use the Drive API with Sheets API. Upload your CSV straight to Drive with files.create and media upload, then use Drive’s files.copy to convert it to Sheets format. This preserves data types way better than manual parsing and handles big files more efficiently. Same auth setup since both APIs use identical credentials. For Python 2.7, just make sure you’re using a compatible google-api-python-client version. I usually create a temp file in Drive, convert it, then delete the original CSV to stay clean. Performance blows away row-by-row updates, especially with files over a few thousand rows.
I’ve hit this problem tons of times. Google Sheets API doesn’t do direct CSV uploads, but you can automate it pretty easily.
Skip the API headaches and authentication mess - use an automation platform instead. Way easier for this kind of repetitive stuff.
Set up a workflow that watches for your CSV files (local, cloud storage, email attachments, whatever) and automatically dumps the data into Google Sheets. It handles all the parsing and API calls for you.
I use this for database exports, reports, data migrations - works way better than maintaining custom API code. Especially when you need error handling or want to add data transforms later.
No worrying about rate limits, token refreshes, or Google changing their API. Just set it and forget it.
Try Latenode - good Google Sheets integration and handles CSV processing without coding: https://latenode.com
Dealing with this exact thing at work right now. Google Sheets API v4 doesn’t do direct CSV uploads, but there’s a workaround. Read your CSV data and use values.update or values.batchUpdate to write it row by row. I parse the CSV with Python’s csv module, convert it to a 2D array, then push it using spreadsheets.values.update. Just specify where you want the data to land. Large datasets get tricky because of quota limits. Batching updates works way better for big files. Also heads up - everything imports as strings initially, so you might need to format data types afterward. For Python 2.7, watch out for UTF-8 encoding when reading CSVs. International characters will bite you if you’re not careful. Learned that the hard way.
Honestly surprised nobody mentioned the import feature yet. There’s actually a sneaky way using the Drive API’s import parameter when uploading. Set mimeType to ‘application/vnd.google-apps.spreadsheet’ during upload and it converts CSV automatically. Way cleaner than parsing rows manually or doing the copy trick. Works great with Python 2.7 too - just don’t forget to handle the response properly since it returns spreadsheet metadata instead of file info.