Tool: download_file_content
Call this tool to download the content of a Drive file as a base64 encoded string.
If the file is a Google Drive first-party mime type, the exportMimeType
field is required and will determine the format of the downloaded file.
If the file is not found, try using other tools like search_files
to find the file the user is requesting.
If the user wants a natural language representation of their Drive content, use the read_file_content
tool ( read_file_content
should be smaller and easier to parse).
The following sample demonstrate how to use curl
to invoke the download_file_content
MCP tool.
| Curl Request |
|---|
curl --location 'https://drivemcp.googleapis.com/mcp/v1' \ --header 'content-type: application/json' \ --header 'accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \ --data '{ "method": "tools/call", "params": { "name": "download_file_content", "arguments": { // provide these details according to the tool' s MCP specification } } , "jsonrpc" : "2.0" , "id" : 1 } ' |
Input Schema
Defines a request to download a file's content.
DownloadFileRequest
| JSON representation |
|---|
{ "fileId" : string , "exportMimeType" : string } |
| Fields | |
|---|---|
fileId
|
Required. The ID of the file to retrieve. |
exportMimeType
|
Optional. For Google native files, the MIME type to export the file to, ignored otherwise. Defaults to text if not specified. |
Output Schema
The response for a file download request.
FileContent
| JSON representation |
|---|
{ "id" : string , "title" : string , "mimeType" : string , "content" : string } |
| Fields | |
|---|---|
id
|
The ID of the file. |
title
|
The title of the file. |
mimeType
|
The MIME type of the file. |
content
|
The base64 encoded content of the file. |
Tool Annotations
Destructive Hint: ❌ | Idempotent Hint: ✅ | Read Only Hint: ✅ | Open World Hint: ❌

