How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database • Hacker News Board

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#21

Post by troels » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 8:53 PM UTC

mavhc wrote: post #10

Where's the free, web based, easy to use database, the web version of MS Access?

podio.com sort of tried that.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#22

Post by huskyr » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 8:56 PM UTC

ngoel36 wrote: post #7

I'm shocked that using something like https://github.com/gimite/google-spreadsheet-ruby to, at the very least, let Google Spreadsheets as a proxy for a bare-bones CMS hasn't been more widespread

Using Google Spreadsheets as a bare-bones CMS is a very popular option in news media, like newspapers.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#23

Post by ryanjodonnell » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 9:02 PM UTC

mavhc wrote: post #10

Where's the free, web based, easy to use database, the web version of MS Access?

https://airtable.com/ is exactly what you are looking for

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#24

Post by mooreds » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 9:04 PM UTC

mavhc wrote: post #10

Where's the free, web based, easy to use database, the web version of MS Access?

I've been looking for that too. Google Fusion Tables is a bit of what I was looking for, but too limited (and not well supported for general purpose business applications--the main use case was building maps).

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#25

Post by mooreds » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 9:06 PM UTC

donpinkus wrote: post #3

mooreds wrote: post #2

I beat my head on APIs from Google spreadsheets, so good on ya! How does blockspring deal with Google Spreadsheet availability issues? I remember the spreadsheet not always being available.

Thanks! Yea I was trying to use Google Spreadsheet, getting annoyed with the JSONP and the goofy way they returned their JSON, so figured I'd just wrap it in something easier to use... What "availability issues" did you run into? I haven't noticed any with my sheets yet

Just the spreadsheet data being intermittently down, and of course, impossible to troubleshoot. We ran processes against it fairly often, and even had it proxied to some mobile devices.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#26

Post by bcRIPster » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 9:08 PM UTC

A spreadsheet is NOT a database! Argh!

As a person who gets asked to fix these kinds of projects once they hit a wall (performance/concurrency/etc) and then have to migrate them to a proper DB platform, just stop it! Put it on in a DB up front and save some poor developer their sanity.

Please.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#27

Post by jaybna » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

Closest any company has come to a decent web version of Access is Intuit Quickbase. But it is priced for enterprise and not hobbiest. Lacks full SQL but can do some pretty amazing things. Also has reasonable REST-like API. I built a PoC data backend for an iPhone app really easily.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#28

Post by bduerst » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 9:20 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #2

I beat my head on APIs from Google spreadsheets, so good on ya! How does blockspring deal with Google Spreadsheet availability issues? I remember the spreadsheet not always being available.

Same here!

We went from using Spreadsheets to using our own flat files on Drive, but the API service would throw random rejection errors for both.

Long story short, we learned that you should not try to use Drive or Google docs as a program database. It's designed first and foremost for users.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#29

Post by ecesena » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 9:25 PM UTC

I'm a big fan of spreadsheets instead of db -- it has it's limitations of course, but works great for apps with a few thousand read-only records (items/products or even just text captions).

I built HasGluten [1, 2] with react + google spreadsheet, hosted on github for free, you get a cheap, scalable, geo-distributed software stack, with simple interfaces to maintain both code (GitHub Pages) and data (Google Sheets — also great for the non-tech).

[1] http://hasgluten.com

[2] https://github.com/hasgluten/hasgluten

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#30

Post by cdcarter » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 9:31 PM UTC

jaybna wrote: post #27

Closest any company has come to a decent web version of Access is Intuit Quickbase. But it is priced for enterprise and not hobbiest. Lacks full SQL but can do some pretty amazing things. Also has reasonable REST-like API. I built a PoC data backend for an iPhone app really easily.

Another option is of course Salesforce/Force.com. Point and click, incredible customization potential, easy to build UI and reports, point-and-click business processes, and very extensible by code if your admins can't accomplish something.

Still very expensive, but free for non-profits!