Download a spreadsheet from Google Docs using Python

Question

Can you produce a Python example of how to download a Google Docs spreadsheet given its key and worksheet ID (gid)? I can't.

I've scoured versions 1, 2 and 3 of the API. I'm having no luck, I can't figure out their compilcated ATOM-like feeds API, the gdata.docs.service.DocsService._DownloadFile private method says that I'm unauthorized, and I don't want to write an entire Google Login authentication system myself. I'm about to stab myself in the face due to frustration.

I have a few spreadsheets and I want to access them like so:

username = '[email protected]' password = getpass.getpass()  def get_spreadsheet(key, gid=0):     ... (help!) ...  for row in get_spreadsheet('5a3c7f7dcee4b4f'):     cell1, cell2, cell3 = row     ... 

Please save my face.

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Update 1: I've tried the following, but no combination of Download() or Export() seems to work. (Docs for DocsService here)

import gdata.docs.service import getpass import os import tempfile import csv  def get_csv(file_path):   return csv.reader(file(file_path).readlines())  def get_spreadsheet(key, gid=0):   gd_client = gdata.docs.service.DocsService()   gd_client.email = '[email protected]'   gd_client.password = getpass.getpass()   gd_client.ssl = False   gd_client.source = "My Fancy Spreadsheet Downloader"   gd_client.ProgrammaticLogin()    file_path = tempfile.mktemp(suffix='.csv')   uri = 'http://docs.google.com/feeds/documents/private/full/%s' % key   try:     entry = gd_client.GetDocumentListEntry(uri)      # XXXX - The following dies with RequestError "Unauthorized"     gd_client.Download(entry, file_path)      return get_csv(file_path)   finally:     try:       os.remove(file_path)     except OSError:       pass 

Answer 1

The https://github.com/burnash/gspread library is a newer, simpler way to interact with Google Spreadsheets, rather than the old answers to this that suggest the gdata library which is not only too low-level, but is also overly-complicated.

You will also need to create and download (in JSON format) a Service Account key: https://console.developers.google.com/apis/credentials/serviceaccountkey

Here's an example of how to use it:

import csv import gspread from oauth2client.service_account import ServiceAccountCredentials  scope = ['https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds'] credentials = ServiceAccountCredentials.from_json_keyfile_name('credentials.json', scope)  docid = "0zjVQXjJixf-SdGpLKnJtcmQhNjVUTk1hNTRpc0x5b9c"  client = gspread.authorize(credentials) spreadsheet = client.open_by_key(docid) for i, worksheet in enumerate(spreadsheet.worksheets()):     filename = docid + '-worksheet' + str(i) + '.csv'     with open(filename, 'wb') as f:         writer = csv.writer(f)         writer.writerows(worksheet.get_all_values())