ZDrive
A lightweight and easy to use Python library to upload and download contents from Google Drive.
Author: | Abhinav Anand |
---|
Contents
1 What is it
Google Drive is the most used cloud storage platform. A need for some minimal yet effective tool to transfer contents to and from Drive is important!
There is a number of such libraries already present with Pydrive being the most amazing. Pydrive has a lot of functionalities but there are certain major things that it lacks. The goal of this library is to address the bulk uploading/downloading functionality in a way that is easy-to-use and yet covers the users' requirements.
2 Features
- Upload folders anywhere in the Drive maintaining the same directory structure as present locally.
- Download folders from anywhere in the Drive to anywhere in the PC maintaining the same directory structure as present in the Drive.
- Download or Upload whole directory in less than 5 lines of code.
- Can sustain minor network interruptions.
- Bulk upload/download made easy.
- Minimal dependencies.
- Easy to use.
- Fast!
- Returns
JSON
objects -
- Support
-
- OS Support: Linux, Windows, Mac
- Language Support: Python 2.x, 3.x
3 Installation
pip (Recommended)
3.1 Option 1: installing through$ pip install ZDrive
If you are behind a proxy
$ pip --proxy [username:password@]domain_name:port install ZDrive
Note: If you get command not found
then
$ sudo apt-get install python-pip
should fix that
3.2 Option 2: Installing from source (Only if you must)
$ git clone https://github.com/ab-anand/ZDrive.git
$ cd ZDrive/
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
$ python setup.py install
Note: If you get permission denied
then
$ sudo python setup.py install
should fix that
4 Usage
4.1 Initial Setup
- Follow the article to get your drive-api credentials.
- Once you have the
clients-secret.json
, rename it tocredentials.json
and place it in the same folder where you'll be running the script.
4.2 Downloader
-
Downloader()
allows you to download folder/files from the Drive. - The output location where the files will get downloaded can be specified too.
-
Downloader()
maintains the same directory tree structure while downloading from the Drive thus making it convenient to read. - Google Drive is a semantic (also called tag-based) file system meaning it stores files not based on their location, but based on an ID.
- Semantic file systems allow you to have multiple files with the same name and to have one file appearing in multiple places.
- Thus for performing any action related to a file/folder in Drive, we would need the IDs of the file/folder.
-
ZDrive
allows you to retrieve a list of files/folders present inside the Drive along with their IDs. -
Downloader()
also uses multiprocessing for speeding up the download process. - Using the
Downloader()
>>> from zdrive import Downloader
>>> output_directory = "/home/abhinav/Documents"
>>> d = Downloader()
>>> folder_id = 'XXXX-YYYY-ZZZZ'
>>> d.downloadFolder(folder_id, destinationFolder=output_directory)
- If no
destinationFolder
is specified, thenDownloader()
would create a default folder nameddrive_content
and it would download the contents there. - Also, if the specified
destinationFolder
doesn't already exist,Downloader()
would create the folder first and the perform the downloading.
4.3 Uploader
-
Uploader()
allows you to upload folder/files from the local PC to drive. - Uploading can be done from any specified location inside the local PC.
- Data can be uploaded at the ROOT level of the Drive or inside any specific folder in the Drive.
- In case of a minor internet interruption(~10-15 secs) the upload would be paused and once the internet connection is stable. The uploading will get resumed.
-
Uploader()
also maintains the exact same directory tree structure while uploading from the local PC to Drive. - The level of child directories to be uploaded is decided by
max_depth
parameter as shown in the example below. - By default,
max_depth = 5
- Using
Uploader()
>>> from zdrive import Uploader
>>> input_directory = "/home/abhinav/Downloads"
>>> u = Uploader()
>>> parent_folder_id = u.createFolder(name="Data")
>>> result = u.uploadFolder(input_directory, max_depth=3, parentId=parent_folder_id)
>>> print(result)
'{
"files":
{
"/Users/abhinavanand/Downloads/test/def.pdf": "1pJNIu-0oyzaUgjLvnf6-3mk81iwLBXyS"
},
"folders":
{
"/Users/abhinavanand/Downloads/test/test-level-1":
{
"files":
{
"/Users/abhinavanand/Downloads/test/test-level-1/abc.pdf": "1YwZs__92yzWdM2e7Nc2atF5lzLnyYV9i"
},
"folders": {},
"id": "1zzh_hGImg94SnzrMC8LdH1vgbO3LMksD"
}
}
}'
- If no
parentId
is specified, thenUploader()
would upload the contents from local PC to the ROOT level in Drive.
5 Contributing
Please refer Contributing page for details
6 Bugs
Please report the bugs at the issue tracker
7 License
Built with
You can find a copy of the License at http://abhinav.mit-license.org/