drive_download function

Download a Drive file

This function downloads a file from Google Drive. Native Google file types, such as Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, must be exported to a conventional local file type. This can be specified:

• explicitly via type
• implicitly via the file extension of path
• not at all, i.e. rely on the built-in default

To see what export file types are even possible, see the Drive API documentation

or the result of drive_about()$exportFormats. The returned dribble includes a local_path column.

drive_download(
  file,
  path = NULL,
  type = NULL,
  overwrite = FALSE,
  verbose = deprecated()
)

Arguments

• file: Something that identifies the file of interest on your Google Drive. Can be a name or path, a file id or URL marked with as_id(), or a dribble.
• path: Character. Path for output file. If absent, the default file name is the file's name on Google Drive and the default location is working directory, possibly with an added file extension.
• type: Character. Only consulted if file is a native Google file. Specifies the desired type of the exported file. Will be processed via drive_mime_type(), so either a file extension like "pdf" or a full MIME type like "application/pdf" is acceptable.
• overwrite: A logical scalar. If local path already exists, do you want to overwrite it?
• verbose: This logical argument to individual googledrive functions is deprecated. To globally suppress googledrive messaging, use options(googledrive_quiet = TRUE) (the default behaviour is to emit informational messages). To suppress messaging in a more limited way, use the helpers local_drive_quiet() or with_drive_quiet().

Returns

An object of class dribble, a tibble with one row per file.

Examples

# Target one of the official example files
(src_file <- drive_example_remote("chicken_sheet"))

# Download Sheet as csv, explicit type
downloaded_file <- drive_download(src_file, type = "csv")

# See local path to new file
downloaded_file$local_path

# Download as csv, type implicit in file extension
drive_download(src_file, path = "my_csv_file.csv")

# Download with default name and type (xlsx)
drive_download(src_file)

# Clean up
unlink(c("chicken_sheet.csv", "chicken_sheet.xlsx", "my_csv_file.csv"))

See Also

Download files, in the Drive API documentation.