Backup files from Google Drive via Python

Question

This is my script (hacked from someone elses) which works to download files from Google Drive. However when I download a file the created/modified date of my files on my local drive is all the time in which the script was run and that file was processed. In order to be useful I need to be able to preserve the dates of the files as they appear on google drive, such as this:

Modified
Jun 10, 2015 by me
Opened
Aug 10, 2016 by me
Created
Oct 23, 2015 

Is there anyway to change the download script so it keeps the dates of the files intact when they are downloaded to my drive? This is the API reference which I havent been able to find the answer in:

https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/

This is the script:

from __future__ import print_function
import sys, httplib2, os, datetime, io
from time import gmtime, strftime
from apiclient import discovery
import oauth2client
from oauth2client import client
from oauth2client import tools
from datetime import date

#########################################################################
# Fixing OSX el capitan bug ->AttributeError: 'Module_six_moves_urllib_parse' object has no attribute 'urlencode'
os.environ["PYTHONPATH"] = "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages"
#########################################################################

CLIENT_SECRET_FILE = 'client_secrets.json'
TOKEN_FILE="drive_api_token.json"
SCOPES = 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive'
APPLICATION_NAME = 'Drive File API - Python'
OUTPUT_DIR=str(date.today())+"_drive_backup"

try:
    import argparse
    flags = argparse.ArgumentParser(parents=[tools.argparser]).parse_args()
except ImportError:
    flags = None

def get_credentials():
    home_dir = os.path.expanduser('~')
    credential_dir = os.path.join(home_dir, '.credentials')
    if not os.path.exists(credential_dir):
        os.makedirs(credential_dir)
    credential_path = os.path.join(credential_dir, TOKEN_FILE)
    store = oauth2client.file.Storage(credential_path)
    credentials = store.get()
    if not credentials or credentials.invalid:
        flow = client.flow_from_clientsecrets(CLIENT_SECRET_FILE, SCOPES)
        flow.user_agent = APPLICATION_NAME
        if flags:
            credentials = tools.run_flow(flow, store, flags)
        else: # Needed only for compatibility with Python 2.6
            credentials = tools.run(flow, store)
        print('Storing credentials to ' + credential_path)
    return credentials

def prepDest():
    if not os.path.exists(OUTPUT_DIR):
        os.makedirs(OUTPUT_DIR)
        return True
    return False

def downloadFile(file_name, file_id, mimeType, service):
    request = service.files().get_media(fileId=file_id)
    if "application/vnd.google-apps" in mimeType:
        if "document" in mimeType:
            request = service.files().export_media(fileId=file_id, mimeType='application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document')
            file_name = file_name + ".docx"
        else: 
            request = service.files().export_media(fileId=file_id, mimeType='application/pdf')
            file_name = file_name + ".pdf"
    print("Downloading -- " + file_name)
    response = request.execute()
    with open(os.path.join(OUTPUT_DIR, file_name), "wb") as wer:
        wer.write(response)

def listFiles(service):
    def getPage(pageTok):
        return service.files().list(q="mimeType != 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder'",
               pageSize=1000, pageToken=pageTok, fields="nextPageToken,files(id,name,mimeType)").execute()
    pT = ''; files=[]
    while pT is not None:
        results = getPage(pT)
        pT = results.get('nextPageToken')
        files = files + results.get('files', [])
    return files

def main():
        credentials = get_credentials()
        http = credentials.authorize(httplib2.Http())
        service = discovery.build('drive', 'v3', http=http)
        for item in listFiles(service):
            downloadFile(item.get('name'), item.get('id'), item.get('mimeType'), service)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

The best that I could do is to add the createdate here:

downloadFile(item.get('name'), item.get('id'), item.get('mimeType'), item.get('createdDate'), service)

Answer 1

I really recommend you using gdcp: Google Drive cp.

All you need to have is:

• Python2.7
• pip

then you need to install those dependencies:

$ pip install pydrive
$ pip install backoff

And finally, follow the setup procedure in order to link your GDrive account with gdcp and upload/download to/from your GDrive account