Download of HTML of native Google Drive documents does not work

Question

I try to download Google Drive documents (with a Drive app) with this python function. it jumps every time to the # The file doesn't have any content stored on Drive part.

def download_file(service, drive_file):
  """Download a file's content.

  Args:
    service: Drive API service instance.
    drive_file: Drive File instance.

  Returns:
    File's content if successful, None otherwise.
  """
  download_url = drive_file.get('downloadUrl')
  if download_url:
    resp, content = service._http.request(download_url)
    if resp.status == 200:
      print 'Status: %s' % resp
      return content
    else:
      print 'An error occurred: %s' % resp
      return None
  else:
    # The file doesn't have any content stored on Drive.
    return None

However I never get the HTML-content of a GDrive document. Is something wrong with my mime settings (HTML Mime type) or should I use another API function?

Answer 1

You need to export the Google Doc, not download it. Check the Google Drive documentation for exporting files, you will need to replace your URL with something like:

download_url = file['exportLinks']['text/html']