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Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app

zerosheets.com

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Re: Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app

#92

Post by fendy3002 »

Based on my experience, you'll get problem when the data is somehow large, and at that point it'll be too hard of a problem to fix / optimize CMIIW. Use it for prototyping and migrate to your own backend, or make a driver compatible with google sheet api, to connect to sql.

Re: Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app

#94

Post by ipince »

Very opportune! I'm just building an app that needs to interface with some sort of spreadsheet. I was going to use Airtable because their API is just better than Google Sheet's, even though I kinda prefer Sheets. I'll give this a try this weekend and see how it goes!

Re: Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app

#95

Post by zharknado »

2 Google Sheets backend stories:

- Needed to manage vocab learning content for 60 world languages, mostly being updated by a handful of university students and a bunch of remote volunteers. Google Sheets was our source of truth, with a nightly sync into MariaDB. We even wrote some callable scripts that could detect ambiguities and other common issues. Saved us a ton of tooling effort, and stakeholders found it cool that we could update content so quickly.

- Working on a new product, my boss found a Figma plugin that lets you wire up prototypes to a Google sheet. It’s report-heavy and we’re still building the real app, so to dogfood it internally I’m running a wizard-of-oz collecting data with a different tool we already built and dumping results into sheets and then sorting/filtering/calculating for all the needed views. Internal stakeholders get a real, clickable prototype with real values that closely approximates what the real product will look like. It’s been amazing!

Re: Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app

#96

Post by ipince »

_adamb wrote: post #87
altdataseller wrote: post #24

I rather use Google Sheets as the front end of my app. Have it call endpoints in my backend and populate the sheet with the data, and auto-generate charts based on that data. Easy, no-nonsense dashboard. Add in some dropdown menus and inputs and you got yourself a good enuff frontend

Me too! I've normalized it in our organizations. We use a combination of app scripts and what we call "Single Button Apps" that are web pages that have a text box (paste the URL of the Gsheet) and a "go" button. The input and output are all in the sheet, but putting the button in a web app makes it easy to iterate on feature set as/if the application grows. https://blog.adambuilds.com/sba-not-spa-the-most-minimal-ui

I read your comment and your blog post and I still don't understand what happens when I put a link to a sheet in the text box and click Go.. what happens? You say your inputs and outputs are all in the sheet.. ok.. what does the button do? Are you just calling some API and giving it the sheet as the input, and then writing the output of the call back to the sheet? So then these Single Button Apps are just API endpoints that you're calling with sheets instead of json or, say Postman (if you want a nicer UI)?

I think I'm failing to see the point here :-/

Re: Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app

#97

Post by yangff »

You don't actaully need any fancy wrapping.. just open https://script.google.com/ you can already access all google's APIs + you will be able to integrate your sheets with your gmail (send email), calendar (you can modify the calendar when the sheet get changes), create pages, allow inputs from form and etc..) The problem with that is the sheet will not have any .. transaction based ops like a real database so for example you want to lock certain resources.. you may fail..

Re: Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app

#98

Post by chambored »

uptown wrote: post #33

I used to use a Google Sheet to drive a restaurant website's menu page. It was perfect. The restaurant could update the spreadsheet whenever something changed, and it'd instantly be reflected on the web. If they ever messed something up, they could just revert.

A couple of weeks ago, I set up this exact thing for a restaurant. Simple and free. I had app script build the site on updates. So they could edit it any time, it would trigger a rebuild, and redeploy as a static site.

Re: Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app

#99

Post by forgotmypwlol »

yangff wrote: post #97

You don't actaully need any fancy wrapping.. just open https://script.google.com/ you can already access all google's APIs + you will be able to integrate your sheets with your gmail (send email), calendar (you can modify the calendar when the sheet get changes), create pages, allow inputs from form and etc..) The problem with that is the sheet will not have any .. transaction based ops like a real database so for ex…

Every time someone makes a simple solution for a problem on this website someone else points out that a much more complicated option already exists.
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