How to automatically import data from uploaded CSV or XLS file into Google Sheets

Question

I have a legacy database system  not web accessible  on a server which generates CSV or XLS reports to a Google Drive folder   Currently  I am manually opening those files in Drive web interface and converting them to Google Sheets   I would rather this be automatic so that I can create jobs that append transform and graph the data in other sheets   Is it possible to output a native  gsheet file   Or is there a way to convert CSV or XLS to  gsheet programmatically after saving it to Google Drive either in Google Apps or via a Windows based script utility

User · Answer

You can get Google Drive to automatically convert csv files to Google Sheets by appending

?convert=true

to the end of the api url you are calling.

EDIT: Here is the documentation on available parameters: https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/files/insert

Also, while searching for the above link, I found this question has already been answered here:

Upload CSV to Google Drive Spreadsheet using Drive v2 API

User · Answer

You can programmatically import data from a csv file in your Drive into an existing Google Sheet using Google Apps Script  replacing appending data as needed    Below is some sample code  It assumes that  a  you have a designated folder in your Drive where the CSV file is saved uploaded to  b  the CSV file is named  report csv  and the data in it comma-delimited  and c  the CSV data is imported into a designated spreadsheet  See comments in code for further details   function importData       var fSource   DriveApp getFolderById reports folder id      reports folder id   id of folder where csv reports are saved   var fi   fSource getFilesByName  report csv       latest report file   var ss   SpreadsheetApp openById data sheet id      data sheet id   id of spreadsheet that holds the data to be updated with new report data    if   fi hasNext          proceed if  report csv  file exists in the reports folder     var file   fi next        var csv   file getBlob   getDataAsString        var csvData   CSVToArray csv      see below for CSVToArray function     var newsheet   ss insertSheet  NEWDATA       create a  NEWDATA  sheet to store imported data        loop through csv data array and insert  append  as rows into  NEWDATA  sheet     for   var i 0  lenCsv csvData length  i lt lenCsv  i             newsheet getRange i 1  1  1  csvData i  length  setValues new Array csvData i                         report data is now in  NEWDATA  sheet in the spreadsheet - process it as needed         then delete  NEWDATA  sheet using ss deleteSheet newsheet                rename the report csv file so it is not processed on next scheduled run     file setName  report-   new Date   toString      csv                http   www bennadel com blog 1504-Ask-Ben-Parsing-CSV-Strings-With-Javascript-Exec-Regular-Expression-Command htm    This will parse a delimited string into an array of    arrays  The default delimiter is the comma  but this    can be overriden in the second argument   function CSVToArray  strData  strDelimiter          Check to see if the delimiter is defined  If not       then default to COMMA    strDelimiter    strDelimiter                Create a regular expression to parse the CSV values    var objPattern   new RegExp                 Delimiters                strDelimiter       r   n   r                 Quoted fields                                                      Standard fields                    strDelimiter      r  n                  gi             Create an array to hold our data  Give the array      a default empty first row    var arrData               Create an array to hold our individual pattern      matching groups    var arrMatches   null        Keep looping over the regular expression matches      until we can no longer find a match    while  arrMatches   objPattern exec  strData             Get the delimiter that was found      var strMatchedDelimiter   arrMatches  1            Check to see if the given delimiter has a length         is not the start of string  and if it matches        field delimiter  If id does not  then we know        that this delimiter is a row delimiter      if         strMatchedDelimiter length  amp  amp         strMatchedDelimiter    strDelimiter                   Since we have reached a new row of data           add an empty row to our data array        arrData push                       Now that we have our delimiter out of the way         let s check to see which kind of value we        captured  quoted or unquoted       if  arrMatches  2               We found a quoted value  When we capture          this value  unescape any double quotes        var strMatchedValue   arrMatches  2   replace          new RegExp           g                                  else             We found a non-quoted value        var strMatchedValue   arrMatches  3                   Now that we have our value string  let s add        it to the data array      arrData  arrData length - 1   push  strMatchedValue              Return the parsed data    return  arrData         You can then create time-driven trigger in your script project to run importData   function on a regular basis  e g  every night at 1AM   so all you have to do is put new report csv file into the designated Drive folder  and it will be automatically processed on next scheduled run   If you absolutely MUST work with Excel files instead of CSV  then you can use this code below  For it to work you must enable Drive API in Advanced Google Services in your script and in Developers Console  see How to Enable Advanced Services for details           Convert Excel file to Sheets     param  Blob  excelFile The Excel file blob data  Required     param  String  filename File name on uploading drive  Required     param  Array  arrParents Array of folder ids to put converted file in  Optional  will default to Drive root folder     return  Spreadsheet  Converted Google Spreadsheet instance      function convertExcel2Sheets excelFile  filename  arrParents       var parents    arrParents           check if optional arrParents argument was provided  default to empty array if not   if    parents isArray   parents          make sure parents is an array  reset to empty array if not       Parameters for Drive API Simple Upload request  see https   developers google com drive web manage-uploads simple    var uploadParams         method  post       contentType   application vnd ms-excel      works for both  xls and  xlsx files     contentLength  excelFile getBytes   length      headers    Authorization    Bearer     ScriptApp getOAuthToken         payload  excelFile getBytes              Upload file to Drive root folder and convert to Sheets   var uploadResponse   UrlFetchApp fetch  https   www googleapis com upload drive v2 files  uploadType media amp convert true   uploadParams         Parse upload amp convert response data  need this to be able to get id of converted sheet    var fileDataResponse   JSON parse uploadResponse getContentText           Create payload  body  data for updating converted file s name and parent folder s    var payloadData         title  filename       parents            if   parents length        Add provided parent folder s  id s  to payloadData  if any     for   var i 0  i lt parents length  i             try           var folder   DriveApp getFolderById parents i       check that this folder id exists in drive and user can write to it         payloadData parents push  id  parents i                   catch e       fail silently if no such folder id exists in Drive                Parameters for Drive API File Update request  see https   developers google com drive v2 reference files update    var updateParams         method  put       headers    Authorization    Bearer     ScriptApp getOAuthToken         contentType   application json       payload  JSON stringify payloadData             Update metadata  filename and parent folder s   of converted sheet   UrlFetchApp fetch  https   www googleapis com drive v2 files   fileDataResponse id  updateParams      return SpreadsheetApp openById fileDataResponse id             Sample use of convertExcel2Sheets   for testing       function testConvertExcel2Sheets       var xlsId    0B9              OFE      ID of Excel file to convert   var xlsFile   DriveApp getFileById xlsId      File instance of Excel file   var xlsBlob   xlsFile getBlob       Blob source of Excel file for conversion   var xlsFilename   xlsFile getName       File name to give to converted file  defaults to same as source file   var destFolders          array of IDs of Drive folders to put converted file in  empty array   root folder   var ss   convertExcel2Sheets xlsBlob  xlsFilename  destFolders     Logger log ss getId         The above code is also available as a gist here

User · Answer

In case anyone would be searching - I created utility for automated import of xlsx files into google spreadsheet  xls2sheets   One can do it automatically via setting up the cronjob for   cmd sheets-refresh  readme describes it all   Hope that would be of use

User · Answer

Mar 2017  The accepted answer is not the best solution  It relies on manual translation using Apps Script  and the code may not be resilient  requiring maintenance  If your legacy system autogenerates CSV files  it s best they go into another folder for temporary processing  importing  uploading to Google Drive  amp  converting  to Google Sheets files    My thought is to let the Drive API do all the heavy-lifting  The Google Drive API team released v3 at the end of 2015  and in that release  insert   changed names to create   so as to better reflect the file operation  There s also no more convert flag -- you just specify MIMEtypes    imagine that   The documentation has also been improved  there s now a special guide devoted to uploads  simple  multipart  and resumable  that comes with sample code in Java  Python  PHP  C   NET  Ruby  JavaScript Node js  and iOS Obj-C that imports CSV files into Google Sheets format as desired   Below is one alternate Python solution for short files   simple upload   where you don t need the apiclient http MediaFileUpload class  This snippet assumes your auth code works where your service endpoint is DRIVE with a minimum auth scope of https   www googleapis com auth drive file     filenames  amp  MIMEtypes DST FILENAME    inventory  SRC FILENAME   DST FILENAME     csv  SHT MIMETYPE    application vnd google-apps spreadsheet  CSV MIMETYPE    text csv     Import CSV file to Google Drive as a Google Sheets file METADATA     name   DST FILENAME   mimeType   SHT MIMETYPE  rsp   DRIVE files   create body METADATA  media body SRC FILENAME  execute   if rsp      print  Imported  r to  r  as  s      SRC FILENAME  DST FILENAME  rsp  mimeType       Better yet  rather than uploading to My Drive  you d upload to one  or more  specific folder s   meaning you d add the parent folder ID s  to METADATA   Also see the code sample on this page   Finally  there s no native  gsheet  file  -- that file just has a link to the online Sheet  so what s above is what you want to do   If not using Python  you can use the snippet above as pseudocode to port to your system language  Regardless  there s much less code to maintain because there s no CSV parsing  The only thing remaining is to blow away the CSV file temp folder your legacy system wrote to

[google-apps-script] How to automatically import data from uploaded CSV or XLS file into Google Sheets

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