Accessing Microsoft Sharepoint files and data using Python

Question

I am using Microsoft sharepoint. I have an url, by using that url I need to get total data like photos,videos,folders,subfolders,files,posts etc... and I need to store those data in database(Sql server). I am using python.

So,Please anyone suggest me how to do this and I am beginner for accessing sharepoint and working this sort of things.

Answer 1

Here's the starter code for connecting to share point through Python and accessing the list of files, folders and individual file contents of Sharepoint as well. You can build on top of this to suit your needs.

Please note that this method works for public Sharepoint sites that are accessible through internet. For Organisation restricted Sharepoint sites that are hosted on a Company's intranet, I haven't tested this code out.

You will have to modify the link to the Sharepoint file a bit since you cannot directly access a Sharepoint file in Python using the URL address of that file which is copied from the web browser.

from office365.runtime.auth.authentication_context import AuthenticationContext
from office365.sharepoint.client_context import ClientContext
from office365.sharepoint.files.file import File 

####inputs########
# This will be the URL that points to your sharepoint site. 
# Make sure you change only the parts of the link that start with "Your"
url_shrpt = 'https://YourOrganisation.sharepoint.com/sites/YourSharepointSiteName'
username_shrpt = 'YourUsername'
password_shrpt = 'YourPassword'
folder_url_shrpt = '/sites/YourSharepointSiteName/Shared%20Documents/YourSharepointFolderName/'

#######################



###Authentication###For authenticating into your sharepoint site###
ctx_auth = AuthenticationContext(url_shrpt)
if ctx_auth.acquire_token_for_user(username_shrpt, password_shrpt):
  ctx = ClientContext(url_shrpt, ctx_auth)
  web = ctx.web
  ctx.load(web)
  ctx.execute_query()
  print('Authenticated into sharepoint as: ',web.properties['Title'])

else:
  print(ctx_auth.get_last_error())
############################
  
  
  
  
####Function for extracting the file names of a folder in sharepoint###
###If you want to extract the folder names instead of file names, you have to change "sub_folders = folder.files" to "sub_folders = folder.folders" in the below function
global print_folder_contents
def print_folder_contents(ctx, folder_url):
    try:
       
        folder = ctx.web.get_folder_by_server_relative_url(folder_url)
        fold_names = []
        sub_folders = folder.files #Replace files with folders for getting list of folders
        ctx.load(sub_folders)
        ctx.execute_query()
     
        for s_folder in sub_folders:
            
            fold_names.append(s_folder.properties["Name"])

        return fold_names

    except Exception as e:
        print('Problem printing out library contents: ', e)
######################################################
  
  
# Call the function by giving your folder URL as input  
filelist_shrpt=print_folder_contents(ctx,folder_url_shrpt) 

#Print the list of files present in the folder
print(filelist_shrpt)

Now that we are able to retrieve and print the list of files present in a particular folder in Sharepoint, below is the code to access the file contents of a particular file and save it to local disk having known the file name and path in Sharepoint.

#Specify the URL of the sharepoint file. Remember to change only the the parts of the link that start with "Your"
file_url_shrpt = '/sites/YourSharepointSiteName/Shared%20Documents/YourSharepointFolderName/YourSharepointFileName'

#Load the sharepoint file content to "response" variable
response = File.open_binary(ctx, file_url_shrpt)

#Save the file to your offline path
with open("Your_Offline_File_Path", 'wb') as output_file:  
    output_file.write(response.content)

You can refer to the following links for connecting to SQL server and storing the contents in tables: Connecting to Microsoft SQL server using Python

https://datatofish.com/how-to-connect-python-to-sql-server-using-pyodbc/