Sample code for 30+ languages & platforms
React Native

Download Text File to a String Variable

See more Google Drive Examples

This example demonstrates how to download the content of a text file from Google Drive into a string variable.

Chilkat React Native Downloads

React Native
import { AuthGoogle, Cache, Rest, StringBuilder } from '@chilkat/react-native'

async function chilkatExample() {
  // It requires the Chilkat API to have been previously unlocked.
  // See Global Unlock Sample for sample code.

  // This example uses a previously obtained access token having permission for the 
  // Google Drive scope.

  const gAuth = new AuthGoogle();
  gAuth.accessToken = 'GOOGLE-DRIVE-ACCESS-TOKEN';

  const rest = new Rest();

  // Connect using TLS.
  // A single REST object, once connected, can be used for many Google Drive REST API calls.
  // The auto-reconnect indicates that if the already-established HTTPS connection is closed,
  // then it will be automatically re-established as needed.
  const bAutoReconnect = true;
  await rest.connectAsync('www.googleapis.com', 443, true, bAutoReconnect);

  // Provide the authentication credentials (i.e. the access token)
  rest.setAuthGoogle(gAuth);

  // ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  // To download a file, we must know the file ID.
  // In a previous example (see Build Local Metadata Cache
  // we built a local cache to make it easy to lookup file IDs given a file path.
  // Let's say we want to download "testFolder/abc/123/pigs.json".
  // First we lookup the fileId in the cache.  With the fileId, we can download the file.
  const gdCache = new Cache();
  gdCache.level = 0;
  gdCache.addRoot('C:/ckCache/googleDrive');

  let fileId: string;
  try {
    fileId = gdCache.fetchText('testFolder/abc/123/pigs.json');
  } catch {
    console.log('Filepath not found in cache.');
    return;
  }

  // We need to send a GET request like this:
  // GET https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/fileId?alt=media
  // The fileId is part of the path.
  const sbPath = new StringBuilder();
  sbPath.append('/drive/v3/files/');
  sbPath.append(fileId);
  rest.addQueryParam('alt', 'media');

  // The FullRequestNoBody returns the file content in the response body.
  let fileContent: string;
  try {
    fileContent = await rest.fullRequestNoBodyAsync('GET', sbPath.getAsString());
  } catch {
    console.log(rest.lastErrorText);
    return;
  }

  // A successful response will have a status code equal to 200.
  if (rest.responseStatusCode !== 200) {
    console.log(`response status code = ${rest.responseStatusCode}`);
    console.log(`response status text = ${rest.responseStatusText}`);
    console.log(`response header: ${rest.responseHeader}`);
    return;
  }

  console.log(fileContent);

  console.log('File downloaded.');
}