10 ms·

Show HN: Turn a Google Spreadsheet into an API

357 points by michaeloblak 11y ago

michaeloblak 11y ago
Paste Google Spreadsheet url and get a link to an RESTful API. Read (GET) and save (POST).
TD-Linux 11y ago
I would really prefer something like this to be a local library or something, adding another remote service in between negatively affects security and reliability. Especially in this case where there is no HTTPS yet.
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Will do HTTPS.
nbevans 11y ago
API doesn't look very REST to me. It is basically just using HTTP as a JSON transport. The JSON contains a "status" code which appears to loosely follow the HTTP status code numbering. But if that was the intent then why not just use HTTP status codes like a true REST endpoint? Otherwise, a neat idea. Needs a Office 365 connector too.
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  It's an MVP right now. Yep, will introduce those fixes this week! Thanks for kind words.
  - arethuza 11y ago
    Microsoft (specifically Power BI) is pretty keen on consuming OData so exposing a Google spreadsheet as OData might be interesting.
    - cdcarter 11y ago
      Salesforce loves to consume OData too. I'd be very interested in a sheet->OData connector.
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  true REST != JSON :D yes json it's convenient. no json isn't stateful, unless you transmit operations and allow API discovery, not just data.
JayeshSidhwani 11y ago
Will you maintain relationship between sheets? For many API use-cases, I'd expect my data to be relational.
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  It's great idea! I'll think about it. You want use each sheet as a separate table (like in DB), right?
  - JayeshSidhwani 11y ago
    Exactly.
    - michaeloblak 11y ago
      I didn't thought about it yet, but right now when you put =SUM(A1:A10) into cell, and GET (or POST) it via API, you will get the result (sum of the column 1-10). So, it'll be working with sheets the same way. ex. when you put =Sheet2!A1 and get that via API, you will get the value of A1 cell in Sheet2.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
user1241320 11y ago
Cool. I used https://github.com/jlord/sheetsee https://github.com/jlord/sheetsee for a little thing. These things can be very handy.
binoyxj 11y ago
Neat. Instantly converted my BTC price tracking spreadsheet [1] into an API [2] 1) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUVXmC04KIU5K1Osb_4H5pRjHimIujioxpO8Y9bpWVU/edit?usp=drive_web https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUVXmC04KIU5K1Osb_4H... 2) http://sheetsu.com/apis/2aab25c7 http://sheetsu.com/apis/2aab25c7
- paulsnar 11y ago
  Note: if you changed the first row to show the type of data that will follow, that API will be tons nicer to use.
andybak 11y ago
1. How to get columns? 2. Your docs say: http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/:column_name http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/:column_name Is ':' a documentation convention somewhere that I've not come across? I tried: http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/:Email http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/:email until I realised it was just: http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/Email
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Yes, it's just /column/Email.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- adamcanady 11y ago
  This is typically the way it's done in Node.js's Express library: http://expressjs.com/api.html#req http://expressjs.com/api.html#req
- codingminds 11y ago
  ':' is not that uncommon. E.g.: http://mojolicio.us/perldoc/Mojolicious/Guides/Routing#Standard-placeholders http://mojolicio.us/perldoc/Mojolicious/Guides/Routing#Stand...
- cdbattags 11y ago
  the colon is meant to show/explain the following is a variable
- atmosx 11y ago
  Would be nice you could get single 'row' too, by number like: '<url>/row/2'
IIAOPSW 11y ago
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 features are up, the ability to disable parts of the API (eg dump the whole spreadsheet) would be necessary. Obviously you wouldn't build a large app with this, but I could see many traditional businesses using it for more than just prototyping.
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Thanks for the ideas! I'll consider them.
- osullivj 11y ago
  You can do that with SpreadServe[1] now. Instead of Google docs it uses real Excel .xls spreadsheets and supports VBA and XLL addins. It turns your spreadsheets into async scriptable servers. There are Python & Java APIs. [1] http://spreadserve.com http://spreadserve.com
  - comrh 11y ago
    Is this open source anywhere or just closed beta?
    - osullivj 11y ago
      Some OSS here: https://github.com/SpreadServe https://github.com/SpreadServe Sign up for the beta here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/spreadserve https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/spreadserve AWS hosted instance: http://54.148.111.119:8888 http://54.148.111.119:8888 Docs: http://spreadserve.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ http://spreadserve.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
- julienmarie 11y ago
  You can do that also with http://calcfusion.com http://calcfusion.com ( disclaimer I work there ).
arcatek 11y ago
That's nice - I've recently made a small project to wrap Github's Gists around an open API[1] for the same use case - a small open database easily browseable -, but your project seems much more interesting - spreadsheets are a very interesting way to solve this. Good job. [1] https://github.com/arcanis/gist-proxy-server https://github.com/arcanis/gist-proxy-server
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Whoa, gists as a DB - that's a neat idea!
joeyspn 11y ago
Cool. Is there any API rate limit?
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Right now, it's Google Drive Quota. I'm testing out the idea, etc. If it goes well I'll probably cut rate limits per user or per API.
  - joeyspn 11y ago
    But google throttles requests to popular docs right? I mean, the "Wow, this file seems very popular" thingy... Is there any way to calculate it? Maybe you could pass JMeter [0] or bench-rest [1] so we can have some numbers for orientation? Anyways, it's really handy for simple and non traffic-intensive projects. Well done! [0] http://jmeter.apache.org/ http://jmeter.apache.org/ [1] https://github.com/jeffbski/bench-rest https://github.com/jeffbski/bench-rest
sgt 11y ago
Slightly unrelated but - isn't there a super cost-effective way of quickly whipping up a CRUD API with minimal configuration? Often I implement fairly backends in Java or Go that could might as well have been "configured" from the beginning, instead of implemented each time.
- joeyspn 11y ago
  Parse or Firebase come to my mind... both have very generous starter plans. https://www.firebase.com/docs/rest/quickstart.html https://www.firebase.com/docs/rest/quickstart.html https://www.parse.com/docs/rest/guide https://www.parse.com/docs/rest/guide
- SeeDave 11y ago
  If you're into node, you might want to check out json-server. A single json file with one sample entity is the basis of a full API. Check it out at https://github.com/typicode/json-server https://github.com/typicode/json-server
  - fzaninotto 11y ago
    Or FakeRest for that matter. Why would you set up a server when everything you need is a browser ? https://github.com/marmelab/FakeRest https://github.com/marmelab/FakeRest
    - SeeDave 11y ago
      Whoa, looks neat and honestly sounds too good to be true. >Intercept XMLHttpRequest to fake a REST server based on JSON data. Use it on top of Sinon.js to test JavaScript REST clients on the browser side (e.g. single page apps) without a server. I'll check it out this weekend, but man... thanks for sharing!
huskyr 11y ago
Google Spreadsheets is awesome as a quick and dirty CMS. I use it all the time at the newspaper i work for, in combination with Tabletop (https://github.com/jsoma/tabletop https://github.com/jsoma/tabletop). Only thing i lack right now is some kind of library that could cache those sheets using Redis for speed.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dangerscarf 11y ago
  Flatware was built to be an S3 caching buddy for Tabletop, might prove useful for you: https://github.com/jsoma/flatware https://github.com/jsoma/flatware
jmhuret 11y ago
Really great start! I could see this being very useful. If you were to extend the functionality to include full CRUD on entities, I think I would start using it immediately on some proof of concept work. For instance, being able to GET, PUT/PATCH, and DELETE by id (or per row) would be awesome. Thanks again for the nice MVP work!
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Thanks! I'm planning to implement PUT and DELETE soon.
kleebeesh 11y ago
I've used sheetrock (https://github.com/chriszarate/sheetrock https://github.com/chriszarate/sheetrock) with good success in the past. But this definitely seems more refined.
Poiesis 11y ago
Was this inspired by a Danielle Morrill tweet by any chance?
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Yes, it was. I've similar problem like she had. I started looking for some good solution. Didn't found anything, so I wrote it myself. I twitted her, but no response from her. If you have contact with her and she still needs it, please let her now about Sheetsu.
madisonmay 11y ago
Sort of related (but the other way around): https://www.blockspring.com/ https://www.blockspring.com/
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Yes, Blockspring is really great software. I've one API endpoint (from Sheetsu) which is getting data via Blockspring.
- osullivj 11y ago
  https://etrading.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/blockspring-symphony/ https://etrading.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/blockspring-sympho...
usertaken 11y ago
How is this any different than just getting the json feed for the sheet? I find it much more flexible.
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  You can POST your data. PUT and DELETE soon.
  - pseudosavant 11y ago
    That'll be great. Is CORS support on the roadmap too?
    - michaeloblak 11y ago
      Yes, it's. - PUT/DELETE - CORS - more sheets in the same workbook - access for only one file in the Google Drive - private APIs
rubbingalcohol 11y ago
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 eventually we had to set up a secondary server to cache the spreadsheet result because pulling directly from Google in realtime was too unreliable.
- rafaquintanilha 11y ago
  Thanks for sharing. It's clear this approach works for small datasets and if you want something more reliable under heavy load just go for a proper database. Might work well with prototypes though.
- bobfunk 11y ago
  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 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 https://www.netlify.com that'll run the builds for you and let you trigger builds via webhooks, and you have a Google spreadsheet based publishing engine where the final sites are completely static and live straight on a CDN. Used it for one site where we used the scripting options of Google spreadsheets to add a "Publish Now" image button to the sheet, so in the end user could edit the the sheet, and then press "Publish" to trigger a build+deploy. If the users are already used to spredsheets, it can be a really handy little anti CMS :) [disclaimer: I'm a founder of netlify]
  - michaeloblak 11y ago
    That's a great use case!
  - wale 11y ago
    Hey @bobfunk how do i contact you concerning your app - netlify. Really great use case
chrisallick 11y ago
Every year, twice a year someone posts this solution. We get it. You hack.
- Vexs 11y ago
  So? Out of the thousands of people that frequent this site, a tiny percentage of them make this, and it's cool for people that have never seen it. Also, relevant xkcd. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
  - chrisallick 11y ago
    no. cause then eeeeeeeveryone goes "oh cool I've done the same thing." so the only take away is that people don't learn from the past. sad.
- aarondf 11y ago
  That's an extremely dismissive comment. He did something, and is telling people. Good for him. http://carl.flax.ie/dothingstellpeople.html http://carl.flax.ie/dothingstellpeople.html
philbo87 11y ago
This is great! I want to build an app that can insert transactions on the go into my existing budgeting spreadsheet, and this really takes away a lot of the dirty work.
speleding 11y ago
Nice way to bypass zapier.com for some simple stuff because they can get expensive quickly. I just started using it to store a log of supersaas.com appointments in a Google spreadsheet, works great.
philbo87 11y ago
Is there a way to get data from each sheet in a workbook? I'd love to use this, it is so simple. But it only seems to get the first sheet in my workbook.
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Yes, it could be done. I'll implement that feature.
  - philbo87 11y ago
    Awesome! FWIW, my needs don't require any sort of "relational" concept as some comments have suggested, I just need to be able to do all existing operations on each sheet in the workbook. I guess being able to get a list of the sheets in the workbook might be useful, as well, or get a sheet by name, but for my use case I already know the name.
Confiks 11y ago
I recently hacked something together that's using Tabletop and React to render 'products' that can be entered into a 'database' using Google Forms: http://jsbin.com/zaberiqami/1/edit?js,output http://jsbin.com/zaberiqami/1/edit?js,output The top part of the code is separated from the bottom plumbing, and is sprinkled with comments in Dutch for my students to edit ('8th grade', Dutch 2VWO). I actually used it more as an example and inspiration to talk about databases in general. The group is a mix of students from the previous year; by setting the bar high and encouraging them to change the parts they knew something about, I could gauge their individual skill level a bit. Pink product listings ensued. JSBin really is an awesome tool I couldn't do without.
Abundnce10 11y ago
I see that you request access to 'view and manage' the spreadsheets and files in my Google Drive? Is this for each spreadsheet/file or just the one I've linked to the in URL?
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Right now it's for all. I'm actually fixing it right now, to be access only for the one specific file.
  - Abundnce10 11y ago
    Perfect! That was the only thing holding me back from getting started. Nice work, BTW!
vikingcaffiene 11y ago
Used this approach at a previous company and was amazed at first. Wondered why it wasn't more commonly used. A poor mans API! Whats not to like?? Then I found out why: when put under any kind of load it completely falls over and stops sending data at all. Also randomly would throw security/authentication errors that none of our devs noticed because it only happened on windows and older versions of OSX (we were a Linux shop). Its a fun and novel approach but should never be used in a production application that needs to scale.
pacoverdi 11y ago
Sheetsu is pronounced the same as "Chie dessus" in French, meaning "crap on [it|you|...]" :)
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Hahaha :) It was supposed to sound like Shih Tzu, breed of dog - http://jp12.r0tt.com/l_d67efae0-58bd-11e2-baa5-afb676b00012.jpg http://jp12.r0tt.com/l_d67efae0-58bd-11e2-baa5-afb676b00012....
mkelley82 11y ago
So I threw this into a website to try and load some data into a table, and get: XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://sheetsu.com/apis/d54d6315?sort=Description&order=asc http://sheetsu.com/apis/d54d6315?sort=Description&order=asc. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. How do I handle that?
- pseudosavant 11y ago
  I ran into the same thing. Sheetsu apparently doesn't have CORS (http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/cors/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/cors/) enabled so it won't work from client-side JS right now.
  - michaeloblak 11y ago
    Already added to the to do list. Thanks for noticing it.
staticvar 11y ago
Cloudstitch is another service that gives you a RESTful interface over a Google Sheet. http://www.cloudstitch.com/ http://www.cloudstitch.com/ I made a video showing how to send a Raspberry Pi's temperature sensor data to a Google Sheet using Cloudstitch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqa9Zkm7pCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqa9Zkm7pCU
- rememberlenny 11y ago
  Cloudstitch is pretty neat for low-tech workers too. Reminds me of the same audience that Zapier targets. Great for marketing, report prep, etc.
j_s 11y ago
Another discussion 6 months ago triggered by a Blockspring (SaaS tool) blogpost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258774
xchip 11y ago
wow, it requires to access all my googledrive data and the spreadsheets.
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  This'll be fixed soon!
atmosx 11y ago
Great My blog[1] uses a static side generator called middleman[2] and I was looking for a way to share 'quotes' in the website's subtitle. This seems to be the best solution! I was about to write a simple Sinatra API to run in localhost, but that's a way better solution for my use case! Thanks! [1] http://www.convalesco.org/ http://www.convalesco.org/ [2] https://middlemanapp.com/ https://middlemanapp.com/ UPDATE: A good use case is to use the HTML form to store subscribe/notify-me emails for landing pages. I was about to build a YAML file or use SQLite3 to store emails via form, but this is so much more convenient.
michaeloblak 11y ago
I've got submited to Product Hunt[1]. [1] http://www.producthunt.com/tech/sheetsu http://www.producthunt.com/tech/sheetsu
prawks 11y ago
What is the advantage of using this service over hitting Google's RESTful Spreadsheet API directly? https://developers.google.com/google-apps/spreadsheets https://developers.google.com/google-apps/spreadsheets
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  It's easier.
  - oso2k 11y ago
    Could you explain what you mean by easier?
    - michaeloblak 11y ago
      You don't have to implement Google API or use any lib to talk with it. Just paste link and get API end-point with docs, which is easier to use. Much more easier than creating your app at Google Console, connecting with it, etc. Especially if you are not a programmer.
jrochkind1 11y ago
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?
julienmarie 11y ago
An alternative is also http://calcfusion.com/ 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...
intrasight 11y ago
Google Spreadsheets already have a native REST API. I use it to feed the charts in http://pittsburghtoday.org/ 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.
permeable 11y ago
Awesome API, but one question. How do you prevent other people from doing a GET once they know your sheetsu API url?
techjacker 11y ago
Or you could roll your own with this npm package I wrote which turns a google sheet into static JSON: https://github.com/techjacker/google-docs-cms https://github.com/techjacker/google-docs-cms On my server I have a cron script running which pulls the new JSON if there have been any changes.

357 points by michaeloblak 11y ago

Paste Google Spreadsheet url and get a link to an RESTful API. Read (GET) and save (POST).

I would really prefer something like this to be a local library or something, adding another remote service in between negatively affects security and reliability. Especially in this case where there is no HTTPS yet.

michaeloblak 11y ago
Will do HTTPS.

nbevans 11y ago

API doesn't look very REST to me. It is basically just using HTTP as a JSON transport. The JSON contains a "status" code which appears to loosely follow the HTTP status code numbering. But if that was the intent then why not just use HTTP status codes like a true REST endpoint? Otherwise, a neat idea. Needs a Office 365 connector too.

michaeloblak 11y ago
It's an MVP right now. Yep, will introduce those fixes this week! Thanks for kind words.
- arethuza 11y ago
  Microsoft (specifically Power BI) is pretty keen on consuming OData so exposing a Google spreadsheet as OData might be interesting.
  - cdcarter 11y ago
    Salesforce loves to consume OData too. I'd be very interested in a sheet->OData connector.
LoSboccacc 11y ago
true REST != JSON :D yes json it's convenient. no json isn't stateful, unless you transmit operations and allow API discovery, not just data.

JayeshSidhwani 11y ago

Will you maintain relationship between sheets? For many API use-cases, I'd expect my data to be relational.

michaeloblak 11y ago
It's great idea! I'll think about it. You want use each sheet as a separate table (like in DB), right?
- JayeshSidhwani 11y ago
  Exactly.
  - michaeloblak 11y ago
    I didn't thought about it yet, but right now when you put =SUM(A1:A10) into cell, and GET (or POST) it via API, you will get the result (sum of the column 1-10). So, it'll be working with sheets the same way. ex. when you put =Sheet2!A1 and get that via API, you will get the value of A1 cell in Sheet2.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

user1241320 11y ago

Cool. I used https://github.com/jlord/sheetsee https://github.com/jlord/sheetsee for a little thing. These things can be very handy.

binoyxj 11y ago

Neat. Instantly converted my BTC price tracking spreadsheet [1] into an API [2] 1) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUVXmC04KIU5K1Osb_4H5pRjHimIujioxpO8Y9bpWVU/edit?usp=drive_web https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUVXmC04KIU5K1Osb_4H... 2) http://sheetsu.com/apis/2aab25c7 http://sheetsu.com/apis/2aab25c7

paulsnar 11y ago
Note: if you changed the first row to show the type of data that will follow, that API will be tons nicer to use.

andybak 11y ago

1. How to get columns? 2. Your docs say: http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/:column_name http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/:column_name Is ':' a documentation convention somewhere that I've not come across? I tried: http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/:Email http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/:email until I realised it was just: http://sheetsu.com/apis/12345/column/Email

michaeloblak 11y ago
Yes, it's just /column/Email.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
adamcanady 11y ago
This is typically the way it's done in Node.js's Express library: http://expressjs.com/api.html#req http://expressjs.com/api.html#req
codingminds 11y ago
':' is not that uncommon. E.g.: http://mojolicio.us/perldoc/Mojolicious/Guides/Routing#Standard-placeholders http://mojolicio.us/perldoc/Mojolicious/Guides/Routing#Stand...
cdbattags 11y ago
the colon is meant to show/explain the following is a variable
atmosx 11y ago
Would be nice you could get single 'row' too, by number like: '<url>/row/2'

IIAOPSW 11y ago

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 features are up, the ability to disable parts of the API (eg dump the whole spreadsheet) would be necessary. Obviously you wouldn't build a large app with this, but I could see many traditional businesses using it for more than just prototyping.

michaeloblak 11y ago
Thanks for the ideas! I'll consider them.
osullivj 11y ago
You can do that with SpreadServe[1] now. Instead of Google docs it uses real Excel .xls spreadsheets and supports VBA and XLL addins. It turns your spreadsheets into async scriptable servers. There are Python & Java APIs. [1] http://spreadserve.com http://spreadserve.com
- comrh 11y ago
  Is this open source anywhere or just closed beta?
  - osullivj 11y ago
    Some OSS here: https://github.com/SpreadServe https://github.com/SpreadServe Sign up for the beta here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/spreadserve https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/spreadserve AWS hosted instance: http://54.148.111.119:8888 http://54.148.111.119:8888 Docs: http://spreadserve.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ http://spreadserve.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
julienmarie 11y ago
You can do that also with http://calcfusion.com http://calcfusion.com ( disclaimer I work there ).

arcatek 11y ago

That's nice - I've recently made a small project to wrap Github's Gists around an open API[1] for the same use case - a small open database easily browseable -, but your project seems much more interesting - spreadsheets are a very interesting way to solve this. Good job. [1] https://github.com/arcanis/gist-proxy-server https://github.com/arcanis/gist-proxy-server

michaeloblak 11y ago
Whoa, gists as a DB - that's a neat idea!

joeyspn 11y ago

Cool. Is there any API rate limit?

michaeloblak 11y ago
Right now, it's Google Drive Quota. I'm testing out the idea, etc. If it goes well I'll probably cut rate limits per user or per API.
- joeyspn 11y ago
  But google throttles requests to popular docs right? I mean, the "Wow, this file seems very popular" thingy... Is there any way to calculate it? Maybe you could pass JMeter [0] or bench-rest [1] so we can have some numbers for orientation? Anyways, it's really handy for simple and non traffic-intensive projects. Well done! [0] http://jmeter.apache.org/ http://jmeter.apache.org/ [1] https://github.com/jeffbski/bench-rest https://github.com/jeffbski/bench-rest

sgt 11y ago

Slightly unrelated but - isn't there a super cost-effective way of quickly whipping up a CRUD API with minimal configuration? Often I implement fairly backends in Java or Go that could might as well have been "configured" from the beginning, instead of implemented each time.

joeyspn 11y ago
Parse or Firebase come to my mind... both have very generous starter plans. https://www.firebase.com/docs/rest/quickstart.html https://www.firebase.com/docs/rest/quickstart.html https://www.parse.com/docs/rest/guide https://www.parse.com/docs/rest/guide
SeeDave 11y ago
If you're into node, you might want to check out json-server. A single json file with one sample entity is the basis of a full API. Check it out at https://github.com/typicode/json-server https://github.com/typicode/json-server
- fzaninotto 11y ago
  Or FakeRest for that matter. Why would you set up a server when everything you need is a browser ? https://github.com/marmelab/FakeRest https://github.com/marmelab/FakeRest
  - SeeDave 11y ago
    Whoa, looks neat and honestly sounds too good to be true. >Intercept XMLHttpRequest to fake a REST server based on JSON data. Use it on top of Sinon.js to test JavaScript REST clients on the browser side (e.g. single page apps) without a server. I'll check it out this weekend, but man... thanks for sharing!

huskyr 11y ago

Google Spreadsheets is awesome as a quick and dirty CMS. I use it all the time at the newspaper i work for, in combination with Tabletop (https://github.com/jsoma/tabletop https://github.com/jsoma/tabletop). Only thing i lack right now is some kind of library that could cache those sheets using Redis for speed.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dangerscarf 11y ago
Flatware was built to be an S3 caching buddy for Tabletop, might prove useful for you: https://github.com/jsoma/flatware https://github.com/jsoma/flatware

jmhuret 11y ago

Really great start! I could see this being very useful. If you were to extend the functionality to include full CRUD on entities, I think I would start using it immediately on some proof of concept work. For instance, being able to GET, PUT/PATCH, and DELETE by id (or per row) would be awesome. Thanks again for the nice MVP work!

michaeloblak 11y ago
Thanks! I'm planning to implement PUT and DELETE soon.

kleebeesh 11y ago

I've used sheetrock (https://github.com/chriszarate/sheetrock https://github.com/chriszarate/sheetrock) with good success in the past. But this definitely seems more refined.

Poiesis 11y ago

Was this inspired by a Danielle Morrill tweet by any chance?

michaeloblak 11y ago
Yes, it was. I've similar problem like she had. I started looking for some good solution. Didn't found anything, so I wrote it myself. I twitted her, but no response from her. If you have contact with her and she still needs it, please let her now about Sheetsu.

madisonmay 11y ago

Sort of related (but the other way around): https://www.blockspring.com/ https://www.blockspring.com/

michaeloblak 11y ago
Yes, Blockspring is really great software. I've one API endpoint (from Sheetsu) which is getting data via Blockspring.
osullivj 11y ago
https://etrading.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/blockspring-symphony/ https://etrading.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/blockspring-sympho...

usertaken 11y ago

How is this any different than just getting the json feed for the sheet? I find it much more flexible.

michaeloblak 11y ago
You can POST your data. PUT and DELETE soon.
- pseudosavant 11y ago
  That'll be great. Is CORS support on the roadmap too?
  - michaeloblak 11y ago
    Yes, it's. - PUT/DELETE - CORS - more sheets in the same workbook - access for only one file in the Google Drive - private APIs

rubbingalcohol 11y ago

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 eventually we had to set up a secondary server to cache the spreadsheet result because pulling directly from Google in realtime was too unreliable.

rafaquintanilha 11y ago
Thanks for sharing. It's clear this approach works for small datasets and if you want something more reliable under heavy load just go for a proper database. Might work well with prototypes though.
bobfunk 11y ago
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 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 https://www.netlify.com that'll run the builds for you and let you trigger builds via webhooks, and you have a Google spreadsheet based publishing engine where the final sites are completely static and live straight on a CDN. Used it for one site where we used the scripting options of Google spreadsheets to add a "Publish Now" image button to the sheet, so in the end user could edit the the sheet, and then press "Publish" to trigger a build+deploy. If the users are already used to spredsheets, it can be a really handy little anti CMS :) [disclaimer: I'm a founder of netlify]
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  That's a great use case!
- wale 11y ago
  Hey @bobfunk how do i contact you concerning your app - netlify. Really great use case

chrisallick 11y ago

Every year, twice a year someone posts this solution. We get it. You hack.

Vexs 11y ago
So? Out of the thousands of people that frequent this site, a tiny percentage of them make this, and it's cool for people that have never seen it. Also, relevant xkcd. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- chrisallick 11y ago
  no. cause then eeeeeeeveryone goes "oh cool I've done the same thing." so the only take away is that people don't learn from the past. sad.
aarondf 11y ago
That's an extremely dismissive comment. He did something, and is telling people. Good for him. http://carl.flax.ie/dothingstellpeople.html http://carl.flax.ie/dothingstellpeople.html

philbo87 11y ago

This is great! I want to build an app that can insert transactions on the go into my existing budgeting spreadsheet, and this really takes away a lot of the dirty work.

speleding 11y ago

Nice way to bypass zapier.com for some simple stuff because they can get expensive quickly. I just started using it to store a log of supersaas.com appointments in a Google spreadsheet, works great.

philbo87 11y ago

Is there a way to get data from each sheet in a workbook? I'd love to use this, it is so simple. But it only seems to get the first sheet in my workbook.

michaeloblak 11y ago
Yes, it could be done. I'll implement that feature.
- philbo87 11y ago
  Awesome! FWIW, my needs don't require any sort of "relational" concept as some comments have suggested, I just need to be able to do all existing operations on each sheet in the workbook. I guess being able to get a list of the sheets in the workbook might be useful, as well, or get a sheet by name, but for my use case I already know the name.

Confiks 11y ago

I recently hacked something together that's using Tabletop and React to render 'products' that can be entered into a 'database' using Google Forms: http://jsbin.com/zaberiqami/1/edit?js,output http://jsbin.com/zaberiqami/1/edit?js,output The top part of the code is separated from the bottom plumbing, and is sprinkled with comments in Dutch for my students to edit ('8th grade', Dutch 2VWO). I actually used it more as an example and inspiration to talk about databases in general. The group is a mix of students from the previous year; by setting the bar high and encouraging them to change the parts they knew something about, I could gauge their individual skill level a bit. Pink product listings ensued. JSBin really is an awesome tool I couldn't do without.

Abundnce10 11y ago

I see that you request access to 'view and manage' the spreadsheets and files in my Google Drive? Is this for each spreadsheet/file or just the one I've linked to the in URL?

michaeloblak 11y ago
Right now it's for all. I'm actually fixing it right now, to be access only for the one specific file.
- Abundnce10 11y ago
  Perfect! That was the only thing holding me back from getting started. Nice work, BTW!

vikingcaffiene 11y ago

Used this approach at a previous company and was amazed at first. Wondered why it wasn't more commonly used. A poor mans API! Whats not to like?? Then I found out why: when put under any kind of load it completely falls over and stops sending data at all. Also randomly would throw security/authentication errors that none of our devs noticed because it only happened on windows and older versions of OSX (we were a Linux shop). Its a fun and novel approach but should never be used in a production application that needs to scale.

pacoverdi 11y ago

Sheetsu is pronounced the same as "Chie dessus" in French, meaning "crap on [it|you|...]" :)

michaeloblak 11y ago
Hahaha :) It was supposed to sound like Shih Tzu, breed of dog - http://jp12.r0tt.com/l_d67efae0-58bd-11e2-baa5-afb676b00012.jpg http://jp12.r0tt.com/l_d67efae0-58bd-11e2-baa5-afb676b00012....

mkelley82 11y ago

So I threw this into a website to try and load some data into a table, and get: XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://sheetsu.com/apis/d54d6315?sort=Description&order=asc http://sheetsu.com/apis/d54d6315?sort=Description&order=asc. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. How do I handle that?

pseudosavant 11y ago
I ran into the same thing. Sheetsu apparently doesn't have CORS (http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/cors/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/cors/) enabled so it won't work from client-side JS right now.
- michaeloblak 11y ago
  Already added to the to do list. Thanks for noticing it.

staticvar 11y ago

Cloudstitch is another service that gives you a RESTful interface over a Google Sheet. http://www.cloudstitch.com/ http://www.cloudstitch.com/ I made a video showing how to send a Raspberry Pi's temperature sensor data to a Google Sheet using Cloudstitch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqa9Zkm7pCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqa9Zkm7pCU

rememberlenny 11y ago
Cloudstitch is pretty neat for low-tech workers too. Reminds me of the same audience that Zapier targets. Great for marketing, report prep, etc.

j_s 11y ago

Another discussion 6 months ago triggered by a Blockspring (SaaS tool) blogpost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258774

xchip 11y ago

wow, it requires to access all my googledrive data and the spreadsheets.

michaeloblak 11y ago
This'll be fixed soon!

atmosx 11y ago

Great My blog[1] uses a static side generator called middleman[2] and I was looking for a way to share 'quotes' in the website's subtitle. This seems to be the best solution! I was about to write a simple Sinatra API to run in localhost, but that's a way better solution for my use case! Thanks! [1] http://www.convalesco.org/ http://www.convalesco.org/ [2] https://middlemanapp.com/ https://middlemanapp.com/ UPDATE: A good use case is to use the HTML form to store subscribe/notify-me emails for landing pages. I was about to build a YAML file or use SQLite3 to store emails via form, but this is so much more convenient.

michaeloblak 11y ago

I've got submited to Product Hunt[1]. [1] http://www.producthunt.com/tech/sheetsu http://www.producthunt.com/tech/sheetsu

prawks 11y ago

What is the advantage of using this service over hitting Google's RESTful Spreadsheet API directly? https://developers.google.com/google-apps/spreadsheets https://developers.google.com/google-apps/spreadsheets

michaeloblak 11y ago
It's easier.
- oso2k 11y ago
  Could you explain what you mean by easier?
  - michaeloblak 11y ago
    You don't have to implement Google API or use any lib to talk with it. Just paste link and get API end-point with docs, which is easier to use. Much more easier than creating your app at Google Console, connecting with it, etc. Especially if you are not a programmer.

jrochkind1 11y ago

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?

julienmarie 11y ago

An alternative is also http://calcfusion.com/ 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...

intrasight 11y ago

Google Spreadsheets already have a native REST API. I use it to feed the charts in http://pittsburghtoday.org/ 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.

permeable 11y ago

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

techjacker 11y ago

Or you could roll your own with this npm package I wrote which turns a google sheet into static JSON: https://github.com/techjacker/google-docs-cms https://github.com/techjacker/google-docs-cms On my server I have a cron script running which pulls the new JSON if there have been any changes.