7

My Google Drive looks something like this:

picture1.jpg

song1.mp3

a/b/file1.txt

a/b/file2.txt

a/b/file3.jpg

a/b/file4.m4a

a/b/...

I want to use PyDrive to download every file in folder "b". After looking at the documentation and checking StackOverflow, I still cannot figure out how to do this. How would I download all of the files in folder "b" (which is contained in folder "a") using PyDrive. Also, in case it's relevant please note that folder "b" contains thousands of files.

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James Shapiro
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1 Answers1

13

I figured it out. Basically you need to use the file id to list or download a folder's contents.

Assuming that file_list is the root directory:

for file1 in file_list:
    if file1['title'] == '[name_of_target_folder]':
        folder_id = file1['id']

Then 

> folder_id 
> 'WIU1xyz19g83abcdefg'

(for example)

get every file in 'folder':

file_list = drive.ListFile({'q': "'{}' in parents and trashed=false".format(folder_id)}).GetList()

download every file in 'folder':

for i, file1 in enumerate(sorted(file_list, key = lambda x: x['title']), start=1):
    print('Downloading {} from GDrive ({}/{})'.format(file1['title'], i, len(file_list)))
    file1.GetContentFile(file1['title'])
tuomastik
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James Shapiro
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    Downloading each file individually seems incredibly slow when I run it. Is there no way to just grab an entire directory at once? – sh37211 Apr 27 '19 at 04:30
  • @james - I have around 30K files and the ListFile command takes ages - is there any recommendation ?! – Areza Feb 14 '20 at 22:33
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    @user702846 I think this is probably what you're looking for: https://pythonhosted.org/PyDrive/filelist.html#paginate-and-iterate-through-files (see the second section on pagination/iteration). – James Shapiro Feb 15 '20 at 10:59