Google Colab: How to read file from Google Drive

In order to read a file that you have uploaded on your Google Drive in Google Colab, you can make use of the drive module from the google.colab package.

Step 1: Mount Google Drive using drive module

The first step is to mount your drive in a Notebook code cell.

from google.colab import drive
drive.mount('/content/drive')

Once you execute this code you will see a message:

You will be asked to login to your Gmail account and authorize the access permissions to Colab.

Step 2: Copy path of your file

Next you can go to the file icon on the left sidebar in Google Drive and expand drive -> MyDrive and copy path of your file (csv, txt, xlsx or any other)

drive_csv_file_path = '/content/drive/MyDrive/data/data.csv'

Step 3: All good to use it in your Python Code!

Example:

import csv

def read_from_csv_file(data_file):
    with open(data_file, 'r') as file:
        csv_reader = csv.reader(file)
        for row in csv_reader:
            print(row)

drive_csv_file_path = '/content/drive/MyDrive/data/data.csv'

read_from_csv_file(drive_csv_file_path)