Am I able to download the data from a Google Spreadsheet with the Drive API?

Question

I've gotten to the point where I have the downloadUrl and exportLinks from the Drive API, however these are file resources. In order to read the actual data in the PHP script, do I have to use an excel reader?

There are a lot of questions just like this, but terribly scattered answers. Most of the answers use The Document API which is now deprecated: https://developers.google.com/google-apps/documents-list/

Answer 1

The Drive SDK will allow you to download the complete file. You will then need to open it and parse it based on whatever export format you chose (eg. excel).

If you want to access rows and cells within the spreadsheet without downloading it, then do NOT use the Drive SDK. Use the Spreadsheet API.