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Connect Google Drive to your preprocessing pipeline, and use the Unstructured Ingest CLI or the Unstructured Ingest Python library to batch process all your documents and store structured outputs locally on your filesystem.

You will need:

The Google Drive prerequisites:

  1. A Google Cloud service account and its related credentials.json key file or its contents in JSON format. Learn how.

  2. Note the local path to the credentials.json key file. Or, copy the key file’s contents into a compatible string—including properly escaped quotes—as required. To make converting a JSON object into a compatible string easier, you can search the Internet by using a search phrase such as “tools for converting a JSON object into a string.” Before using any tool, check to make sure that the tool does not share the key file’s contents with anyone you do not trust.

  3. Give the service account’s email address access to the Google Drive folder. Learn more.

  4. Note the folder ID. This is a part of the URL for your Google Drive folder represented in the following URL as {folder_id}: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/{folder-id}.

The Google Drive connector dependencies:

CLI, Python
pip install "unstructured-ingest[google-drive]"

You might also need to install additional dependencies, depending on your needs. Learn more.

The following environment variables:

  • GOOGLE_DRIVE_FOLDER_ID - The folder ID, represented by --drive-id (CLI) or drive_id (Python).
  • GCP_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY_FILEPATH - The path to the credentials.json key file, represented by --service-account-key-path (CLI) or service_account_key_path (Python), or
  • GCP_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY_STRING - The contents of the credentials.json key file as a string, represented by --service-account-key (CLI) or service_account_key (Python).

Now call the Unstructured CLI or Python. The destination connector can be any of the ones supported. This example uses the local destination connector.

This example sends data to Unstructured API services for processing by default. To process data locally instead, see the instructions at the end of this page.

For the Unstructured Ingest CLI and the Unstructured Ingest Python library, you can use the --partition-by-api option (CLI) or partition_by_api (Python) parameter to specify where files are processed:

  • To do local file processing, omit --partition-by-api (CLI) or partition_by_api (Python), or explicitly specify partition_by_api=False (Python).

    Local file processing does not use an Unstructured API key or API URL, so you can also omit the following, if they appear:

    • --api-key $UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY (CLI) or api_key=os.getenv("UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY") (Python)
    • --partition-endpoint $UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL (CLI) or partition_endpoint=os.getenv("UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL") (Python)
    • The environment variables UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY and UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL
  • To send files to Unstructured API services for processing, specify --partition-by-api (CLI) or partition_by_api=True (Python).

    Unstructured API services also requires an Unstructured API key and API URL, by adding the following:

    • --api-key $UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY (CLI) or api_key=os.getenv("UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY") (Python)
    • --partition-endpoint $UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL (CLI) or partition_endpoint=os.getenv("UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL") (Python)
    • The environment variables UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY and UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL, representing your API key and API URL, respectively.

    Get an API key and API URL.

Output a key file’s contents as a string

If you need to convert the contents of a credentials.json file into a string, you could use a Python script such as the following. This script takes the local path to the key file as input and outputs the key file’s contents as a string.

Python
# Filename: json_file_to_string.py

import json
import sys

def json_file_to_string(file_path):
    try:
        # Read the JSON file.
        with open(file_path, 'r') as file:
            # Load the JSON data.
            data = json.load(file)
        
        # Convert the JSON data back to a string, with no whitespace.
        json_string = json.dumps(data, separators=(',', ':'))
        
        return json_string
    
    except FileNotFoundError:
        print(f"Error: File '{file_path}' not found.")
        return None
    except json.JSONDecodeError:
        print(f"Error: '{file_path}' is not a valid JSON file.")
        return None
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"An unexpected error occurred: {e}")
        return None

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) != 2:
        print("Usage: python json_file_to_string.py <path_to_json_file>")
        sys.exit(1)
    
    file_path = sys.argv[1]
    result = json_file_to_string(file_path)
    
    if result:
        print(result)