gdrive-tools 1.4.0

A collection of usefull tools to interact with the google drive/google docs api.

GDrive Tools

Goal of this Project

The automated managing of google drive documents is quite laborious. This is because of the Google Drive API v3, which does not allow to pass a directory path of a document that should be created. Instead, documents are only ordered using the parents node id.

Since its more common for us to think in directory trees, its easier to specify a full path.

This Project offers methods to manage document by providing real path specifications rather then a child - parent relationship for each document. (For example: Its way more convenient to specify a path by writing something like path/to/my/document than searching for the parent Id of the document).

Usage

The usage of this library should be straight forward.

Firstly, you have to create a GDriveToolsClient - Object which only needs your credentials. This can be archived like so:

import gdrive_tools.gdrive_tools as gt
import gdrive_tools.google_auth as ga
from gdrive_tools.google_filetypes import GoogleFiletypes

SCOPES = [
  'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive',
  'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/documents',
  'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets',
  'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/presentations'
  ]

# Create a google auth object which wraps the authentication on the google
# drive api.
auth = ga.GoogleAuth(SCOPES)
credentials = auth.createCredentials()

# Create the api client and pass the read credentials.
googleDriveToolsClient = gt.GoogleDriveTools(credentials)

Capabilities

With the GDrive tools library, you can do the following things:

Create a new Document

A new document can be created using the createFile() method. The created document will be placed inside a directory with the given path. Any nonexisting directories will be created.

Directories which are placed in the drives trash folder will be ignored.

The following parameters are needed:

• destination(str): Full path, where the document should be moved to. All directories are delimited by a simple slash (/). If the document should be created inside a shared drive, the name of the shared drive should be provided first. (Its basically seen as the root directory.) Example:

  MySharedDrive/subdirectory/anotherSubdirectory
  

  If you want to create a new document on your local drive, the first entry is also the first sub folder. For example:

  subdirectory/anotherSubdirectory
  

• documentName(str): Name of the Document that should be created.

• fileType(int): Type of the document. Currently, the following types are supported:

  • GoogleFiletypes.DOCUMENT: Google Docs file
  • GoogleFiletypes.SHEET: Google Sheets file
  • GoogleFiletypes.SLIDE: Google Slides file

• There are also different keyword arguments which can be used, to modify the created documents. The following ones are currently supported:

  • `sheetTableName(str): Specify a custom name which should be used for the first Sheet, when creating a new sheet.

The return value is the id of the created document.

Move a Document

A document can be moved from one directory to another, either inside your local, shared drive or between shared drives, using the moveDocument() method.

The following parameters are needed.

• sourcePath(str): Full path, of the document, which should be moved. All directories are delimited by a simple slash (/). If the document should be moved inside or to a shared drive, the name of the shared drive should be provided first. Example:

  MySharedDrive/subdirectory/anotherSubdirectory/targetFilename
  

  If you want to create a new document on your local drive, the first entry is seen as the first subdirectory. Example:

  subdirectory/anotherSubdirectory/targetFilename
  

• destinationPath(str): The target path where the document should be moved to. The described syntax of the sourcePath parameter also applies here.

The method returns the id of the moved document.

Copy a Document

Its also possible to copy a document into another directory and/or to another team drive. This can be done by using the copyDocument() - Method.

The following Parameters are required:

• sourcePath(str): The full source path of the document that should be copied. The syntax is equivalent to the syntax of the moveDocument() Method.
• destinationPath(str): The path which defines where the copy of the source document should be created.

The method returns the id of the copied document.

Fill a Sheet

If you want to fill a google documents sheet, you can use the fillSheet() Method. Keep in mind that any existing data inside the sheet will be overwritten.

The method takes the following parameters:

• sheetId(str): The Id of the sheet which should be filled.
• data(List[dict]) The data which should be inserted into the sheet as a list of dictionaries. The Columns are therefore defined by the keys of the dictionaries, whereas all dictionaries must have the same keys.
• [sheetTableName(str)=''] The name of the table inside the given sheet, where the data should be inserted. If the table does not exists, a ValueError will be thrown.

Read Data from a Sheet

With the readSheet() method you can read the data from a sheet. The method will return a list of dictionaries which contains the sheet's rows and columns.

The target sheet has to contain only a single table without extra cells. Its assumed that the first row defines the names of the columns. However, its possible to specify a custom range in the A1 notation. This range defines, which data should be read.

The method takes the following parameters:

• sheetId(str): The id of the target sheet.
• sheetName(str): The name of the table/sheet which should be used.
• [a1Range(str)]: A custom range which points to the data which should be read. Since the sheet name is already passed with the sheetName property, you can't also specify it here.
• [placeholder(dict)]: A dictionary which contains placeholder values for each column, which is not defined. A column is also considered as "not defined" if the value is an empty string.

Grant Permissions

You can grant Permissions to a given document by using the grandApproval() Method.

The method takes the following parameters:

• sheetId(str): The Id of the document, that should be shared with a user.
• email(str): The EMail address of the user, which should gain access to the document.
• accessLevel(GoogleAccessLevel): The type of permission which should be grant to the user.
• [grantType(GoogleGrantTypes)]: You can set a custom grant type by using this property. Please note that if you are using the grant type DOMAIN, the email parameter has to contain the name of the target domain.
• [emailText(str)='']: An optional text which should be embedded inside the email notification which is automatically send by google, if a user gained access to a document.

Read all Files from a Directory

If you want to retrieve a list of all files in a given directory, you can use the readDirectory() method. As the name suggests, this method returns a list of all files which are included in this directory.

The return value of this method is a directory, which has the following keys:

• directory_id: ID of the directory
• files: List of files, found inside this directory.

Whereas each file - directory has the following properties:

• name: Name of the file
• id: ID of the file
• type: filetype

The method only needs one parameter:

• path(str): The path of the directory which should be read. The syntax is the same as in the moveDocument() or copyDocument() methods.

This method returns the dictionary, which is described above.

A ValueError is thrown, if the given directory does not exists.

Return the Id of a Document

If you just want to know the Id of a document which is saved in a given path, you can query it by using the getDocumentId() method.

This method only takes one parameter:

Args:

• path(str): The path to the document, whose Id should be returned.

Returns: The Id of the document, which is stored on the provided path, or an empty string, if the document does not exists.

Example

You can test the library using the given example.py script.

Enable the Google Drive and Docs Api and Download the Client Configuration

In order for the script to work, its required to have a valid credentials.json file. The example script only needs an activated GoogleDrive and GoogleSheets api.

1. Navigate to https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/quickstart/python
2. Click on the Enable the Drive Api Button
3. Navigate to https://developers.google.com/docs/api/quickstart/python
4. Click on the Enable the Docs Api Button
5. Click on Download Client Configuration Button
6. Move the downloaded credentials.json file to this directory.

Install the Dependencies

There are two ways how to install the dependencies.

Using Pip

If you use pip natively, you can simply install the dependencies from the requirements.txt file using pip install -r requirements.txt.

Using Pipenv

This project's dependencies can also be managed with Pipenv. To use Pipenv, make sure its installed on your system (if not it can be done so by executing pip install pipenv). Then you can install the dependencies using pipenv install.

To run the example script in the virtual environnement which was created by pipenv, you can run pipenv run python example.py.