Firstly I appreciate this may be more specifically an issue with Shopify, and I have posted on their forum. But I was hoping someone on here may have gone through the same trouble I am having an have a good solution.
I am trying to find a good method of uploading products to shopify via CSV, but I am having difficulty as the images I have are hosted on Google Drive, which does not in normal cases allow images to uploaded to shopify via CSV. I had this very same issue when working out how to upload products to ebay via CSV, as they also do not allow Drive URL's for the same reason.
With Ebay, I was able to manipulate the URL to a format that was accepted. I use an AppSheet app to collate all the information needed, take photos of products, and produce a CSV document to upload to ebay. The URL below worked very well for ebay, no issues at all:
https://www.appsheet.com/image/getimageurl?appName=MRAK-2598868-21-02-20-2&tableName=Received&fileNa...
When you click on this link you will notice that the URL redirects you to this address:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_PidX8_pEaOvh1T_jiy3zY-sDg1b_DJDuKVBUFVcw-uMYCoVpJXlcjbEEKvxs2E=w0
Sadly, neither of these two URL's are accepted by Shopify when I try and upload them via CSV. I get the "Validation failed: Image failed to download - Invalid URL"
Now, I have managed to find that by removing "=W0" from the end of the URL, and replacing it with "?raw=1" Shopify will allow me to upload the image via CSV. The only downside, is that for whatever reason, when it is uploaded to shopify the quality of the image is not great, despite the image looking good at its URL:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_PidX8_pEaOvh1T_jiy3zY-sDg1b_DJDuKVBUFVcw-uMYCoVpJXlcjbEEKvxs2E?ra...
If anyone has any advice on why the quality of the image is pants in shopify, or if anyone has experience of working with AppSheet and Shopify in this way that would be amazing. Also open to any other suggestions really.
LinkedIn
Twitter
