Automate Google Drive OCR with Python

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. What is Vision AI?
3. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Service
4. Using OCR Service on Google Drive
5. Automating OCR Service with Python
6. Uploading an Image to Google Drive
7. Downloading a File from Google Drive
8. Deleting a File from Google Drive
9. Conclusion
10. FAQs

Automating OCR Service with Python

In today's world, automation is the key to success. It saves time and effort, and it's more efficient. In this article, we will learn how to automate the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) service provided by Google's Vision AI using Python.

What is Vision AI?

Vision AI is a Google official product that provides a lot of machine learning insights. In this article, we will only talk about the OCR service.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Service

OCR is a service that analyzes the text in any image and converts the text from the image into text that You can easily edit on your computer. Google's Vision AI provides this service, and it's paid, but to some extent, it's free Based on several requests.

Using OCR Service on Google Drive

If you only want to use OCR, there is another way to get it from Google Drive. You need to open the image into a Google document, and you can get this option in the menu section. The recognized text is available for your use, and you can simply copy this text and paste it everywhere.

Automating OCR Service with Python

To automate the OCR service, we need to Create a Python script. We can get the detailed documentation from Google by typing "drive v3 python" and clicking on the first link. The prerequisites are already available to us, and we will do this in Python3.

Google provides us with three simple steps for the initial setup. Firstly, we need to enable the Drive API, and for that, we need to click on the button. It will create a new project for that as well. We need to select oAuth client-side, and we will select desktop if we wanted to run on the backend server. The credential key is also available to us, and we need to download this key and keep it in the same folder where our project is located.

In the Second step, we need to install the required modules. The command is given to us, and we can simply copy and paste it into the terminal. In the third step, we need to copy the code given by Google and create a separate file. The main function will look for the token pickle, and currently, it's not available. If it's not available, then it simply executes the below line, which will help us to create the token pickle. This token pickle is working as a session, so we don't need to authenticate every time. After the generation of a token, this line will execute, which ensures the token is valid and gives us service for requesting to drive. We request to drive to get a list of files, and lastly, it's printed here with the help of a loop.

Our first task is to upload an image on the drive, and for that, we need some piece of line, and all those lines of code we can get from the documentation. Uploading of a file on drive code is given, and we need to copy and paste it into the script, which we just created. We need to reformat it and change the service name from here. We also need to import the media file upload method. Currently, it's not imported, so we need to import it first, and this method belongs to the googleapiclient HTTP class. We need to import it as well. Lastly, we need to pass the mimeType into both.

After uploading the image, we need to download the file from the drive. That line of code is also found on the documentation. We need to copy from there and paste it into the script. We need to reformat it and instead of this file id, we will pass this file id. We also need to import the IO module. We need to import this as well, and this will be available in the same class from where We Are importing media file upload. Lastly, we need to correct the print statement as well.

Uploading an Image to Google Drive

To upload an image to Google Drive, we need to follow the below steps:

1. Enable the Drive API.
2. Install the required modules.
3. Copy the code given by Google and create a separate file.
4. Upload the image to Google Drive using the code given by Google.

Downloading a File from Google Drive

To download a file from Google Drive, we need to follow the below steps:

1. Enable the Drive API.
2. Install the required modules.
3. Copy the code given by Google and create a separate file.
4. Download the file from Google Drive using the code given by Google.

Deleting a File from Google Drive

To delete a file from Google Drive, we need to follow the below steps:

1. Enable the Drive API.
2. Install the required modules.
3. Copy the code given by Google and create a separate file.
4. Delete the file from Google Drive using the code given by Google.

Conclusion

In this article, we learned how to automate the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) service provided by Google's Vision AI using Python. We also learned how to upload an image to Google Drive, download a file from Google Drive, and delete a file from Google Drive.

FAQs

1. What is Vision AI? Vision AI is a Google official product that provides a lot of machine learning insights.

2. What is OCR? OCR is a service that analyzes the text in any image and converts the text from the image into text that you can easily edit on your computer.

3. Is OCR service free? Google's Vision AI provides this service, and it's paid, but to some extent, it's free based on several requests.

4. How can we automate the OCR service? We can automate the OCR service using Python.

5. Can we upload an image to Google Drive using Python? Yes, we can upload an image to Google Drive using Python.

6. Can we download a file from Google Drive using Python? Yes, we can download a file from Google Drive using Python.

7. Can we delete a file from Google Drive using Python? Yes, we can delete a file from Google Drive using Python.