How do you create a document in Google Docs programmatically?
api, google-docs
Solution
While the docs call it "uploading", everything boils down to sending an appropriately formatted `HTTP POST` request, so of course it can actually be a new creation rather than an actual "upload" of an otherwise existing file. (Creation through `POST` requests is similar to what's normally described as a `REST API`, though in real `REST` you'd typically use a `PUT` request instead of course).
You just need to create a blob of data representing your document in any of the formats listed here -- depending on your programming language, simplest may be `text/csv` for a spreadsheet and `application/rtf` for a text-document -- then put in in an appropriately formatted `POST` data. For example, to make a spreadsheet in the simplest way (no metadata), you could `POST` something like:
POST /feeds/default/private/full HTTP/1.1
Host: docs.google.com
GData-Version: 3.0
Authorization: <your authorization header here>
Content-Length: 81047
Content-Type: text/csv
Slug: Example Spreadsheet
ColumnA, ColumnB
23, 45
Each specific programming language for which a dedicated API is supplied may offer help with this not-so-hard task; for example, in Python, per the docs, the API recommends using `ETags` to avoid overwriting changes when multiple clients are simultaneously "uploading" (i.e., creating or updating docs). But preparing the POST directly is always possible, since the almost-REST API is documented as the protocol underlying all language-specific APIs.
Problem
The documentation for Google Documents List API, seems to say that you can create a local document and upload it. Is there no way to actually create and edit a document on Google Docs through an API?