Submit new values to a Google Form for a Google Sheet using Python, without the Google APIs

post_form.py

#!/usr/bin/python
"""Posts to a Google Sheet using a Form"""

import re
import sys
import urllib
import urllib2

def get_field_ids(form_url):
  """Returns list of field IDs on the form."""
  response = urllib2.urlopen(form_url)
  html = response.read()
  form_field_info = re.findall('(<input|<textarea)[^>]*id="([^"]*)"', html)
  if form_field_info: # depends on UI version
      fields = [x[1] for x in form_field_info if x[1].startswith("entry")]
  else:
      form_field_info = re.findall('\[\[([0-9]{3,30}),null,0\]\]', html)
      fields = ["entry."+x for x in form_field_info]
  return fields

def post_form_values(form_url, submit_values):
  """Posts list of values to the form."""
  fields = get_field_ids(form_url) # these could be cached too.
  submit_url = form_url.replace("/viewform", "/formResponse")
  values = {}
  for counter in range(0, min(len(submit_values), len(fields))):
    values[fields[counter]] = submit_values[counter]
  data = urllib.urlencode(values)
  req = urllib2.Request(submit_url, data)
  response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
  the_page = response.read()
  # ignore response

def main():
  """Command-line usage possible too!"""
  if len(sys.argv)<3:
    print "Expected: form_url value1 [value2 ...]"
    return
  form_url = sys.argv[1]
  values = sys.argv[2:]
  post_form_values(form_url, values)
                                
if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()