Download public file from Google Drive - Golang

Question

I have a zip file stored on Google Drive (it is shared publicly). I want to know how to download it in Golang. This current code just creates a blank file named "file.zip":

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "io"
    "net/http"
    "os"
)

func main() {
    url := "https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B2Q7X-dUtUBebElySVh1ZS1iaTQ"
    fileName := "file.zip"
    fmt.Println("Downloading file...")

    output, err := os.Create(fileName)
    defer output.Close()

    response, err := http.Get(url)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println("Error while downloading", url, "-", eerrror)
        return
    }
    defer response.Body.Close()

    n, err := io.Copy(output, response.Body)

    fmt.Println(n, "bytes downloaded")
}

Answer 1

This appears to be a bug, either with Google drive or with golang, I'm not sure which!

The problem is that the first URL you gave redirects to a second URL which looks something like this

https://doc-00-c8-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/securesc/ha0ro937gcuc7l7deffksulhg5h7mbp1/8i67l6m6cdojptjuh883mu0qqmtptds1/1376330400000/06448503420061938118/*/0B2Q7X-dUtUBebElySVh1ZS1iaTQ?h=16653014193614665626&e=download

Note the * in the URL which is legal according to this stack overflow question. However it does have a special meaning as a delimeter.

Go fetches the URL with the * encoded as %2A like this

https://doc-00-c8-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/securesc/ha0ro937gcuc7l7deffksulhg5h7mbp1/8i67l6m6cdojptjuh883mu0qqmtptds1/1376330400000/06448503420061938118/%2A/0B2Q7X-dUtUBebElySVh1ZS1iaTQ?h=16653014193614665626&e=download

Which Google replies "403 Forbidden" to.

Google doesn't seem to be resolving the %2A into a *.

According to this article on wikipedia reserved characters (of which * is one) used in a URI scheme: if it is necessary to use that character for some other purpose, then the character must be percent-encoded.

I'm not enough of an expert on this to say who is right, but since Google wrote both parts of the problem it is definitely their fault somewhere!

Here is the program I was using for testing

Answer 2

I found the solution. Use: https://googledrive.com/host/ID

Instead of: https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=ID