Python: download files from google drive using url

Question

I am trying to download files from google drive and all I have is the drive\'s URL.

I have read about google API that talks about some drive_service and

Answer 1

PyDrive allows you to download a file with the function GetContentFile(). You can find the function's documentation here.

See example below:

# Initialize GoogleDriveFile instance with file id.
file_obj = drive.CreateFile({'id': ''})
file_obj.GetContentFile('cats.png') # Download file as 'cats.png'.

This code assumes that you have an authenticated drive object, the docs on this can be found here and here.

In the general case this is done like so:

from pydrive.auth import GoogleAuth

gauth = GoogleAuth()
# Create local webserver which automatically handles authentication.
gauth.LocalWebserverAuth()

# Create GoogleDrive instance with authenticated GoogleAuth instance.
drive = GoogleDrive(gauth)

Info on silent authentication on a server can be found here and involves writing a settings.yaml (example: here) in which you save the authentication details.