Download a spreadsheet from Google Docs using Python

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 csvimport gspreadfrom oauth2client.service_account import ServiceAccountCredentialsscope = ['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())

In case anyone comes across this looking for a quick fix, here's another (currently) working solution that doesn't rely on the gdata client library:

#!/usr/bin/pythonimport re, urllib, urllib2class Spreadsheet(object):    def __init__(self, key):        super(Spreadsheet, self).__init__()        self.key = keyclass Client(object):    def __init__(self, email, password):        super(Client, self).__init__()        self.email = email        self.password = password    def _get_auth_token(self, email, password, source, service):        url = "https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin"        params = {            "Email": email, "Passwd": password,            "service": service,            "accountType": "HOSTED_OR_GOOGLE",            "source": source        }        req = urllib2.Request(url, urllib.urlencode(params))        return re.findall(r"Auth=(.*)", urllib2.urlopen(req).read())[0]    def get_auth_token(self):        source = type(self).__name__        return self._get_auth_token(self.email, self.password, source, service="wise")    def download(self, spreadsheet, gid=0, format="csv"):        url_format = "https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/download/spreadsheets/Export?key=%s&exportFormat=%s&gid=%i"        headers = {            "Authorization": "GoogleLogin auth=" + self.get_auth_token(),            "GData-Version": "3.0"        }        req = urllib2.Request(url_format % (spreadsheet.key, format, gid), headers=headers)        return urllib2.urlopen(req)if __name__ == "__main__":    import getpass    import csv    email = "" # (your email here)    password = getpass.getpass()    spreadsheet_id = "" # (spreadsheet id here)    # Create client and spreadsheet objects    gs = Client(email, password)    ss = Spreadsheet(spreadsheet_id)    # Request a file-like object containing the spreadsheet's contents    csv_file = gs.download(ss)    # Parse as CSV and print the rows    for row in csv.reader(csv_file):        print ", ".join(row)

You might try using the AuthSub method described in the Exporting Spreadsheets section of the documentation.

Get a separate login token for the spreadsheets service and substitue that for the export. Adding this to the get_spreadsheet code worked for me:

import gdata.spreadsheet.servicedef get_spreadsheet(key, gid=0):    # ...    spreadsheets_client = gdata.spreadsheet.service.SpreadsheetsService()    spreadsheets_client.email = gd_client.email    spreadsheets_client.password = gd_client.password    spreadsheets_client.source = "My Fancy Spreadsheet Downloader"    spreadsheets_client.ProgrammaticLogin()    # ...    entry = gd_client.GetDocumentListEntry(uri)    docs_auth_token = gd_client.GetClientLoginToken()    gd_client.SetClientLoginToken(spreadsheets_client.GetClientLoginToken())    gd_client.Export(entry, file_path)    gd_client.SetClientLoginToken(docs_auth_token) # reset the DocList auth token

Notice I also used Export, as Download seems to give only PDF files.