Ruby script to download private google docs

Question

I would like to write a script in Ruby (using the gdata gem, rest-client gem or just straight Net::HTTP) to authenticate with my google docs using gmail-userid/password, and then download a list of private documents and documents.

The GData documents guide makes it clear how to get publicly visible documents, but it's not clear how I can authenticate myself in my script to get access to private documents. The authentication methods they specify all seem to require human intervention, either with a Capcha or some form of OAuth/OpenID redirection.

Is there some way to access my private documents with just a userid/password combination? Or perhaps that along with an API key? If so, can anybody show me how to do this?

Answer 1

So, sometimes giving up, moving on to something else, and coming back with a fresh mindset can do wonders. I started looking at this again this morning and within a couple of hours got it working.

I ditched OAuth because the Ruby OAuth gem seems to be centered around web based applications. I started poking around in Google Data on Rails, and using ClientLogin, it was no problem getting authenticated, and as far as I can tell, you don't get CAPTCHA requests unless you enter in the wrong credentials... or at least I haven't otherwise seen any yet.

Here is a simple code snippet to export a spreadsheet file:

require 'gdata/client'  
require 'gdata/http'  
require 'gdata/auth'  
client = GData::Client::Spreadsheets.new  
client.clientlogin('username', 'password')  
test = client.get("http://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/download/spreadsheets/Export?key="resource_ID"&fmcmd&exportFormat=xls")  
file = File.new("spreadsheet.xls", "wb")  
file.write test.body  
file.close