Applies one or more updates to the document. Each request is validated before being applied. If any request is not valid, then the entire request will fail and nothing will be applied. Some requests have replies to give you some information about how they are applied. Other requests do not need to return information; these each return an empty reply. The order of replies matches that of the requests. For example, suppose you call batchUpdate with four updates, and only the third one returns information. The response would have two empty replies, the reply to the third request, and another empty reply, in that order. Because other users may be editing the document, the document might not exactly reflect your changes: your changes may be altered with respect to collaborator changes. If there are no collaborators, the document should reflect your changes. In any case, the updates in your request are guaranteed to be applied together atomically.

Scopes

You will need authorization for at least one of the following scopes to make a valid call:

  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/documents
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file

If unset, the scope for this method defaults to https://www.googleapis.com/auth/documents. You can set the scope for this method like this: docs1 --scope <scope> documents batch-update ...

Required Scalar Argument

  • <document-id> (string)
    • The ID of the document to update.

Required Request Value

The request value is a data-structure with various fields. Each field may be a simple scalar or another data-structure. In the latter case it is advised to set the field-cursor to the data-structure's field to specify values more concisely.

For example, a structure like this:

BatchUpdateDocumentRequest:
  write-control:
    required-revision-id: string
    target-revision-id: string

can be set completely with the following arguments which are assumed to be executed in the given order. Note how the cursor position is adjusted to the respective structures, allowing simple field names to be used most of the time.

  • -r .write-control required-revision-id=et
    • The optional revision ID of the document the write request is applied to. If this is not the latest revision of the document, the request is not processed and returns a 400 bad request error. When a required revision ID is returned in a response, it indicates the revision ID of the document after the request was applied.
  • target-revision-id=magna
    • The optional target revision ID of the document the write request is applied to. If collaborator changes have occurred after the document was read using the API, the changes produced by this write request are applied against the collaborator changes. This results in a new revision of the document that incorporates both the collaborator changes and the changes in the request, with the Docs server resolving conflicting changes. When using target revision ID, the API client can be thought of as another collaborator of the document. The target revision ID can only be used to write to recent versions of a document. If the target revision is too far behind the latest revision, the request is not processed and returns a 400 bad request error. The request should be tried again after retrieving the latest version of the document. Usually a revision ID remains valid for use as a target revision for several minutes after it's read, but for frequently edited documents this window might be shorter.

About Cursors

The cursor position is key to comfortably set complex nested structures. The following rules apply:

  • The cursor position is always set relative to the current one, unless the field name starts with the . character. Fields can be nested such as in -r f.s.o .
  • The cursor position is set relative to the top-level structure if it starts with ., e.g. -r .s.s
  • You can also set nested fields without setting the cursor explicitly. For example, to set a value relative to the current cursor position, you would specify -r struct.sub_struct=bar.
  • You can move the cursor one level up by using ... Each additional . moves it up one additional level. E.g. ... would go three levels up.

Optional Output Flags

The method's return value a JSON encoded structure, which will be written to standard output by default.

  • -o out
    • out specifies the destination to which to write the server's result to. It will be a JSON-encoded structure. The destination may be - to indicate standard output, or a filepath that is to contain the received bytes. If unset, it defaults to standard output.

Optional General Properties

The following properties can configure any call, and are not specific to this method.

  • -p $-xgafv=string

    • V1 error format.

  • -p access-token=string

    • OAuth access token.

  • -p alt=string

    • Data format for response.

  • -p callback=string

    • JSONP

  • -p fields=string

    • Selector specifying which fields to include in a partial response.

  • -p key=string

    • API key. Your API key identifies your project and provides you with API access, quota, and reports. Required unless you provide an OAuth 2.0 token.

  • -p oauth-token=string

    • OAuth 2.0 token for the current user.

  • -p pretty-print=boolean

    • Returns response with indentations and line breaks.

  • -p quota-user=string

    • Available to use for quota purposes for server-side applications. Can be any arbitrary string assigned to a user, but should not exceed 40 characters.

  • -p upload-type=string

    • Legacy upload protocol for media (e.g. "media", "multipart").

  • -p upload-protocol=string

    • Upload protocol for media (e.g. "raw", "multipart").