Read file from drive in google colab - google-drive-api

Question

I Have read the notebook about how to open drive. I already did as instructed using:
from google.colab import drive
drive.mount('/content/drive')
After this, I can use !ls to list the contents of my drive but I cannot read or open any file. I already tried:
with open("/content/drive/My Drive/filename.ext", "r") as file:
file = open("/content/drive/My Drive/filename.ext", "r")
!cp "/content/drive/My Drive/filename.ext" "filename.ext"
and also
import pandas as pd
file = pd.read_csv("/content/drive/My Drive/filename.ext")
But none of the above worked. I always get "operation not supported" or "cannot open file for reading".
I have seen some suggestin to use PyDrive. But it is done by copy file from Google Drive to Google Drive. I don't get why you would have to copy back and forth files, since I need to iterate over all the files on the folder.
Why can't google colab just read the file stored on drive? Or am I doing something wrong? Another thing is that I uploaded a bunch of csv files, but google drive lists them as ".csv.gsheet" (using glob). Could that be the problem? I have no other ideas.

Answer 1

It is straight forward.
from google.colab import drive
drive.mount('/content/drive')
This will ask to open a url which will authorize the mount after you copy paste the token.
If you are not able to read files even now, then prefix your file path with this: 'drive/My Drive' and you are good to go.
For example: file = 'drive/My Drive/data/file.txt'
Where data is a directory in my Google Drive containing file.txt file.

Answer 2

I ran into a similar issue last night. As some of the previous responders posted there are concerns that influence your ability to read the file. These concerns are, one, making certain that your file is accessible via google drive from your Collab notebook and also, two, making certain that your file is in the correct format.
I will explain the steps and include a screen shot.
Open Google Collab. Open the File Browser.
Click the icon that says Mount Drive when hovered. This inserts a new cell in your notebook with the code:
from google.colab import drive
drive.mount('/content/drive')
Run the cell. You are prompted to accept permissions and get a token to use to mount the drive. Grant the permissions and copy and paste the code into the text input. Hit enter.
The drive now appears in the file browser. Right click the folder /drive/My Drive or click the three dots action menu and select Upload.
Locate your file on disk and Upload.
The file appears in the File Browser. Right click the File (or use the three dots action menu) and select Copy Path.
Paste that file path into your pd.read_csv() call.
Run the cell with the pd.read_csv function call.
You should now have the file uploaded in your Google Drive. Accessible to google collab and file formatting preserved because it not been accessed by any other program to munge the format.
Below is the example sans Permission tab because I previously granted permissions.

Answer 3

I just tried mounting and creating a Drive file as you described and couldn't reproduce the error you describe.
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/17iiKJPQOPv1eW5-Ctf707mPHXDtipE5G
Perhaps try resetting your backend using the Runtime -> Reset all runtimes menu. Or, can you share a notebook illustrating the problem?

Answer 4

I (partially) found out what was going on based on Bob Smith and Ami F's answers.
I believe google drive blocks read access from files converted to drive formats (gsheet, gdoc, etc.). And so, whenever I tried to use !cat or open, I got an "operation unsupported" error. When I tried Bob's example, creating a file and then reading it, it worked on my notebook.
So I managed to prevent google from converting files, deleted the old files and uploaded everything to drive again. Now, all my csv's were being kept unchanged (no .gsheet extesion) and I am able to access them using open.

Answer 5

The fact that you see ".csv.gsheet" filenames even though you upload ".csv" filenames makes me think that you're uploading your CSVs to sheets.google.com instead of drive.google.com. Can you confirm that uploading to drive.google.com makes things work?

Answer 6

I do suspect RenatoSz's answer is correct: I can open XLSX files fine, but even just file = open('name_of_file.gsheet') fails for me with Operation not supported error. Annoying that you cannot do the simple action of opening a Google Sheet in Google Colab - this seems like basic functionality.
A workaround for me was:
from google.colab import auth
auth.authenticate_user()
import gspread
from oauth2client.client import GoogleCredentials
# authorise
gc = gspread.authorize(GoogleCredentials.get_application_default())
# open
gsheets = gc.open_by_url('some_fun_URL')
# read
sheets = gsheets.worksheet('List of all experts').get_all_values()
# parse
df = pd.DataFrame(sheets[1:], columns=sheets[0])
Note that gc.open(...) did not work for me.

Answer 7

You can avoid this problem by the following steps
Upload the dataset(.csv) to google drive.
Now select the uploaded dataset on google drive and select the share option from the drop down menu acquired by making a left-click on the selected file.
Now a pop-up window appears on the screen, change the sharing setting to editor.
And in the bottom left of the pop-up window change the restricted(Only-added can edit) to "Anyone with the link can edit.
After these settings are saved. Copy the generated sharable link.
Now got to the below mentioned website and convert your link by pasting the priorly copied link and generate the google drive downloadable link.
https://sites.google.com/site/gdocs2direct/
Copy the generated google drive downloadable link.
We are ready with the perfect path address now for the dataset.
file = open("Paste Here the Generated link which we copied", "r")
This would sort the issue perfectly.
The same would work even if was a .txt file as well.