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 csv
import gspread
from oauth2client.service_account import ServiceAccountCredentials

scope = ['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/python

import re, urllib, urllib2

class Spreadsheet(object):
    def __init__(self, key):
        super(Spreadsheet, self).__init__()
        self.key = key

class 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.service

def 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.