Uploading Files to Google Colab

Keywords: colab

Note

There are two different methods of uploading files to Google Colab Jupyter notebooks. One way is to have the user upload the file to the user’s Google Drive before running the notebook. Another way is to have the notebook ask the user to upload a file directly into the notebook from the user’s computer. This tutorial outlines both ways.

The notebook code with both methods can be found here

Read File from Drive

This code will read a CSV file using pandas. Before running it, the user must upload the CSV file to the Google Drive of the same Google account on which it runs the notebook in Colab (e.g., your account). The CSV file in this example is titled kag_risk_factors_cervical_cancer but please rename it accordingly to match the file you would like to upload.

Cell 1:

import pandas as pd
from google.colab import drive 
drive.mount("/content/gdrive", force_remount=True)
# The next line of code will tell Colab to read kag_risk_factors_cervical_cancer.csv in your Drive (not in any subfolders)
# so you should alter the code to match whichever .csv you would like to upload.
df=pd.read_csv('gdrive/My Drive/kag_risk_factors_cervical_cancer.csv')
# The next two lines of code convert question marks to NaN and converts values to numeric type, consider 
# removing the next two lines if not necessary.
df = df.replace('?', np.nan) 
df=df.apply(pd.to_numeric)
# If this cell successfully runs then it should output the first five rows, as requested in the next line of code
df.head(5)

Colab will ask you to click on a blue link and sign in with your account. Once done, the user must copy a code and paste it into the box on Colab for authentication purposes. Press Enter after pasting it into the box.

If it outputs an error along the lines of unknown directory, try rerunning the two cells and ensuring that your CSV is not in any folders inside Google drive. You can also alter the code to point it to a subdirectory if needed.

Read File from Direct Upload

To read it with built-in Colab methods, you can use the following code:

Cell 1:

from google.colab import files
df = files.upload()

The user will be prompted to click Browse... and to find the file on the user’s local computer to upload. Sometimes trying to upload the file will give this error:

MessageError: RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded.

In this case, the user should click the folder icon on the left side of Google Colab window, then the paper with an arrow icon (to upload a file), then upload the CSV you wish to use. Then rerunning Cell 1 is not necessary. Simply proceed to Cell 2. If this still does not work, see this stackoverflow page for further information.

Cell 2:

df=pd.read_csv('kag_risk_factors_cervical_cancer.csv')
# The next two lines of code convert question marks to NaN and converts values to numeric type, consider 
# removing the next two lines if not necessary.
df = df.replace('?', np.nan) 
df=df.apply(pd.to_numeric)
# If this cell successfully runs then it should output the first five rows, as requested in the next line of code
df.head(5)

Remember to rename the instances of kag_risk_factors_cervical_cancer.csv accordingly so that it matches your file name.

Acknowledgments

Credit to Carlos who provided the cell to upload the file directly.