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

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#41

Post by spinlock » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

bcRIPster wrote: post #26

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.

I'll admit right away that I haven't looked at the API OP posted so this is a little off the cuff, but .... this is exactly the way you want to do it. If you have a well defined API, you don't care what's on the other side of it. The migration of an app from this library to a proper DB is as well defined as the API.

Imagine if you had a Google Sheets adapter for ActiveRecord. You could start any project this way and it would be super easy to then migrate it to another supported DB.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#42

Post by dpweb » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 10:41 PM UTC

ecesena wrote: post #29

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 —…

You can grab published Google Sheets in JSON using, https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/list/{{doc_id}}/od6/pu...

example, https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/list/1btWWclsRW6-wrIdC...

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#43

Post by ecesena » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 10:44 PM UTC

thalesmello wrote: post #40

ecesena wrote: post #29

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 —…

In Brazil all food manufactures are required to put in the package whether the product contains gluten or not. Isn't that the case in the United States?

It is, but try to go to Safeway and buy a GF powerbar... :)

Jokes aside, we maintain the list mostly for ingredients. Many people, especially "novice", often ask the same questions -- or you may have doubts for strange/unfamiliar foods, for instance if you're traveling in a foreign country.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#44

Post by camhenlin » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 10:45 PM UTC

hbhakhra wrote: post #31

bcRIPster wrote: post #26

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.

He mentions that its explicitly for quick prototyping. I've started a few projects but stopped when setting up the infrastructure became too tedious. For the quick and dirty prototype, this seems perfect.

I normally use nedb for that, works great. I'm sure there's probably something similar for whatever other platform you might be using as well

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#45

Post by grw_ » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 10:46 PM UTC

here is django library for this: https://github.com/georgewhewell/django-sheets

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#46

Post by ecesena » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 10:49 PM UTC

dpweb wrote: post #42

ecesena wrote: post #29

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 —…

You can grab published Google Sheets in JSON using, https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/list/{{doc_id}}/od6/pu... example, https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/list/1btWWclsRW6-wrIdC...

I'm actually using multiple sheets and jsonp [1], but that's essentially what I'm doing.

[1] https://github.com/hasgluten/hasgluten/blob/master/src/app/p...

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#47

Post by clucktheduck » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 11:12 PM UTC

this is cool beans!

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#48

Post by bcRIPster » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 11:25 PM UTC

hbhakhra wrote: post #31

bcRIPster wrote: post #26

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.

He mentions that its explicitly for quick prototyping. I've started a few projects but stopped when setting up the infrastructure became too tedious. For the quick and dirty prototype, this seems perfect.

I understand, but every time I get handed one of these it's because someone who didn't know what they were doing was rapid prototyping something and woops they have 200 hundred users and it's crashing, it's corrupting data, etc...

At one job I'm like "people, just use Access, it's installed on your computer" and they look at me like I'm talking dark wizardry shit with their fingers itching on their pitchforks because they don't know if I'm going to eat their babies.

Arrrrgh!

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#49

Post by donpinkus » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 11:51 PM UTC

grw_ wrote: post #45

here is django library for this: https://github.com/georgewhewell/django-sheets

nice. who wants to fork this for Rails? :P

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#50

Post by bcRIPster » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 11:51 PM UTC

cdcarter wrote: post #33

bcRIPster wrote: post #26

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.

Wouldn't that put you out of work, then? ;) But in all seriousness, using a spreadsheet for prototyping makes perfect sense. Why waste a ton of time setting up a database when you're still figuring out what you are doing, and a spreadsheet works just fine? Yes, there's some hassle when you have to migrate, but that's compared to the hassle of setup. The amount of time to get the first iteration launched is a LOT more…

No, it wouldn't, there's more than enough stuff like this that goes around that taking one slice off the stack isn't really going to change the stack. ;)

The thing is these solutions all sounds great on paper, but in practice for the common person? Not so much. For those people that know what their doing it really doesn't matter because they know what they are doing and update as they scale.

It's the 99% of the rest of the people who see "how easy that was" and suddenly they're over their head. And they are the same people who tell you that you can't change anything about the broken ass interface bolted onto the spreadsheet while you're fixing it.

"Can't you just fix it so it will stop crashing? Why do you want to change all of this? We don't have approvals to change this, the spreadsheet is what was approved by change control. Just make it work."

IT WILL NEVER WORK. Go away. =D