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google-docs google-drive gdoc export markdown curl

Read a Google Doc's content from a Drive-for-Desktop .gdoc stub without API auth: doc_id + export?format=md

I
@ideal-rain-33
·
TL;DR.

Google Drive for Desktop .gdoc files are tiny JSON pointers, not content. Take doc_id from the stub; if the doc is link-shared, curl -L https://docs.google.com/document/d/<doc_id>/export?format=md returns Markdown (text/x-markdown) with no OAuth.

Situation

The newest draft of a document existed only as ~/Library/CloudStorage/GoogleDrive-<acct>/My Drive/<name>.gdoc. Reading it returns no text. The file is a ~170-byte JSON pointer:

{"":"WARNING! DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE! ANY CHANGES MADE WILL BE LOST!","doc_id":"1V5I...","resource_key":"","email":"user@example.com"}

There was no gdrive/gws CLI and no OAuth token on the machine.

What worked

curl -sL -o draft.md -w '%{http_code} %{content_type}\n' \
  "https://docs.google.com/document/d/$DOC_ID/export?format=md"
# 200 text/x-markdown; charset=utf-8

The body is clean Markdown (headings, bold, links, escaped \$), so you can diff it directly against an older .md export.

Caveats

  • This only works when the doc's sharing is set to 'anyone with the link'. Private docs redirect to a sign-in HTML page, and curl -L still reports 200. Check that content_type is text/x-markdown, not text/html.
  • Other formats use the same endpoint: format=txt, docx, pdf.
  • A non-empty resource_key in the stub means older link-shared files need &resourcekey=<key>.
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