Golang with Google V3 API: Passing alt=media to Export call

Question

In Google V3 API for the Go language, how do I pass alt=media to a Files.Export() call? The V3 website does not state how it works for golang. I am simply trying to convert a Google doc to a text document and store it within the drive. Calling Files.Export().Do() results in an error asking for alt=media.

Answer 1

I believe your goal and situation as follows.

• You want to download Google Document on Google Drive as a text data using googleapis for golang.
• You have already been able to download the file using Drive API.

Modification points:

• Unfortunately, alt=media cannot be used for the method of "Files: export". alt=media is used for the method of "Files: get". Ref
• In order to download Google Document on Google Drive as a text data, it is required to use the method of "Files: export". By the way, when you want to download the files except for Google Docs files (Document, Spreadsheet, Slides and so on), please use the method of "Files: get".

When above points are reflected to your script, it becomes as follows.

Modified script:

documentID := "###" // Please set the Document ID.
mimeType := "text/plain"
filename := "sample.txt"

srv, err := drive.New(client)
if err != nil {
    log.Fatalf("Error: %v", err)
}
res, err := srv.Files.Export(documentID, mimeType).Download()
if err != nil {
    log.Fatalf("Error: %v", err)
}
file, err := os.Create(filename)
if err != nil {
    log.Fatalf("Error: %v", err)
}
defer file.Close()
_, err = io.Copy(file, res.Body)

• In this sample script, it supposes that client of your script can be used for downloading the file from Google Drive. Please be careful this.
• When this script is run, the Google Document of documentID is exported as a text file of filename.

References:

• Download files
• Files: export
• google-api-go-client
• Go Quickstart
  • If you want to see the script for authorizing, you can see the Quickstart for Go.