Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#91

Post by wale » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 11:41 PM UTC

bobfunk wrote: post #66

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #44

I've used Google Spreadsheet as an "API" before (manually, not using this wrapper), and it is definitely not made to be used as such. Under heavy load, it slows down or times out, and even under the best circumstances it's not exactly fast. It's great in a pinch. My use-case was a spreadsheet that others in my organization wanted to edit, then we'd pull the data onto a web page and display nicely. It worked, but even…

One thing you can do to make this use-case work better is to combine the spreadsheet as API with a static site generator. I made this very basic plugin for Jekyll: https://github.com/netlify/jekyll-gdrive That'll let you use a Google spreadsheet as a datasource and expose the data to your liquid templates. Combine it with something like https://www.netlify.com that'll run the builds for you and let you trigger builds…

Hey @bobfunk how do i contact you concerning your app - netlify.

Really great use case

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#92

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 11:59 PM UTC

What is it that people think "an API" means, exactly?

Why not speak normal English and say "access a Google Spreadsheet via an API", or something?

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#93

Post by cdcarter » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 1:06 AM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #10

michaeloblak wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an MVP right now. Yep, will introduce those fixes this week! Thanks for kind words.

Microsoft (specifically Power BI) is pretty keen on consuming OData so exposing a Google spreadsheet as OData might be interesting.

Salesforce loves to consume OData too. I'd be very interested in a sheet->OData connector.

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#94

Post by bobfunk » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 1:30 AM UTC

wale wrote: post #91

bobfunk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing you can do to make this use-case work better is to combine the spreadsheet as API with a static site generator. I made this very basic plugin for Jekyll: https://github.com/netlify/jekyll-gdrive That'll let you use a Google spreadsheet as a datasource and expose the data to your liquid templates. Combine it with something like https://www.netlify.com that'll run the builds for you and let you trigger builds…

Hey @bobfunk how do i contact you concerning your app - netlify. Really great use case

You can shoot me a mail at matt@netlify.com

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#95

Post by julienmarie » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 1:48 AM UTC

An alternative is also http://calcfusion.com/ ( disclaimer, I work there and we just launched ). It uses xls spreadsheets and is more oriented towards business rules and computations. There are some nifty features like audit and versioning, automatic html form building etc...

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#96

Post by julienmarie » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 1:51 AM UTC

IIAOPSW wrote: post #15

Ah man, this is perfect! finally a way to get simple servers running with very little hassle. One major feature I would like is the ability to specify cells for I/O. Eg in some sort of "my api" console I could say "/custom_api, {stuff:A5, things:A6}, B2". Then requests to GET /custom_api would plug in the key-value of "stuff" into A5 and "things" into A6 and then respond with whatever is in B2. Once more useful featu…

You can do that also with http://calcfusion.com ( disclaimer I work there ).

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#97

Post by intrasight » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:09 AM UTC

Google Spreadsheets already have a native REST API. I use it to feed the charts in http://pittsburghtoday.org/ The key to getting good performance is to not put too much data into the sheets. Low thousands of rows is not a problem.

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#98

Post by permeable » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:53 AM UTC

Awesome API, but one question. How do you prevent other people from doing a GET once they know your sheetsu API url?

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#99

Post by fenomas » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 3:59 AM UTC

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #44

I've used Google Spreadsheet as an "API" before (manually, not using this wrapper), and it is definitely not made to be used as such. Under heavy load, it slows down or times out, and even under the best circumstances it's not exactly fast. It's great in a pinch. My use-case was a spreadsheet that others in my organization wanted to edit, then we'd pull the data onto a web page and display nicely. It worked, but even…

I've been looking at workflows like this, but the problem is being completely cut off from editing or testing locally when offline.

That is, it would be great to keep my data in a google sheet and transform it into a static json file that lives in my app source, but then if I need to work offline, all I can do is edit the json and remember to reflect the changes into the sheet later.

I don't suppose anyone has found a workflow that solves this?

Re: Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

#100

Post by RachelF » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 4:48 AM UTC

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #44

I've used Google Spreadsheet as an "API" before (manually, not using this wrapper), and it is definitely not made to be used as such. Under heavy load, it slows down or times out, and even under the best circumstances it's not exactly fast. It's great in a pinch. My use-case was a spreadsheet that others in my organization wanted to edit, then we'd pull the data onto a web page and display nicely. It worked, but even…

We had a similar experience. Google started giving us "Sharing quota for this file has been exceeded" errors.