Connections to Google Sheets

I love the functionality of using excel spreadsheets to drive my applications in Intuiface. Any possibility to allow connections with Google spreadsheets as an interface asset? This would allow cloud updates to the app in real time with multiple users editing!

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This would be EXTREMELY useful!

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Yes PLEASE :slight_smile:

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Any hope?

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Up! Weā€™d love it!

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Actually, this is already possible with the creation of custom Interface Asset using a REST Api and a third party tool like Sheetsu. Creating these Interface Assets on the fly will be much easier with 6.0.

Another tool that we like a lot is Airtable. You can see how we used it in the Task board sample in this article section.

Seb I was thinking that since Excel has such powerful manipulation tools that some APIā€™s donā€™t provide (such as filtering, searching, etc)

It would be REALLY cool if there was an Interface Asset ā€œExcel-Connectorā€ that could ā€˜readā€™ in data from an api into the cells of a local excel file. Then the designer could use that excel file for regular manipulations. Just pull any parameters in, and design-out what you need.

I assume the connector would need to lock the excel file from the user as well, so adding/editing rows on the fly might be overwritten by the API or crash excel if something is accidentally renamed.

Curious about your thoughts on this. It seems the API explorer prepares the data nicely enough that this could be done?

Actually, we have another idea in mind which would be to bring the filtering / sorting mechanisms available to any REST based Interface Asset. That would let you download all the content you need using the API Explorer, then do the processing locally on the client side.

Regarding your idea, I think you can already do that with the API Explorer + add row feature of Excel. You could implement a kind of routine based on triggers & actions that would clear the excel file / refresh the data retrieved from the REST Interace Asset / fill the Excel file with that information.

Seb, thatā€™d be awesome to have those sorting/filtering abilities directly from the API data. How awesome. Then youā€™d be manipulating live data. Lots of possibilities, and it would make it easier to use the awesome powers of Airtable and others.

In the mean time, thanks for the suggestions on running the Add Row to an Excel doc. Though it could take a little bit, it could be a solution to hold us over until the api filter/sorting is released. Much appreciated as always.

Seb,
Just a quick question about adding each row of the API data into the Excel docā€¦

As far as I can see, I would actually need to create a collection of the API data, then set a timer or counter to go through each record of that collection, and add that specific row. (Itā€™d be nice if I could increment the record without creating a visible collection, but it doesnā€™t appear that I can automatically increment or manipulate the record numbers shown when binding to the API. For example, when using the Add Row, and binding to my Airtable API items, I can see that Iā€™m viewing the first of 11 records, but I canā€™t automate the ability to go to the next record and add that row)

Also along these lines, there doesnā€™t appear to be any way to grab the total number of records from the API or the collection it feeds into. Itā€™s not super necessary, but it could be useful.

Iā€™ll keep working at it, but I was curious if there may be a different or easier way than Iā€™m approaching this method.

**Update: Iā€™m not sure this is actually possible anymore without the ability specify the record number to be updated from within the API data.

The only way I can see to sequentially update each item from API data into each row of excel is to create a button inside the API Dataā€™s collection itself. The button inside the collection has an awareness of which record it is on, and therefore can add itā€™s own record data into a new row of excel. However, buttons inside collections cannot be triggered or manipulated, so there doesnā€™t appear to be any way to ā€˜automateā€™ this.

Hi Alex,

Youā€™re right, being able to bind the row number or item number in a feed is something we are still missing.

In your case, Iā€™d do the following:

  • create an asset flow with a static item as item #1
  • add your data feed into this asset flow.
  • in the template, add an is moved into focus trigger that would call the excel action (with the right context) and call the next action on the asset flow
  • to start the routine, just call the scroll to item 2 on the asset flow to start with the first data feed item.

Because of the asset flow animation that canā€™t be changed, itā€™ll take some time to process the whole list (0.5s x number of items)

Thanks Seb, Iā€™ll give this a try and report back. If it works it may be Ok to set this up and run overnight or twice per day, at least until API data can be manipulated a little more.

I know thereā€™s tons of new ideas and ā€˜wishesā€™ for the API data, but I hope your developers know how awesome the API builder is. It was probably a lot of work - they did a great job. Itā€™s definitely sparked some serious interest in the communityā€¦and in my opinion may help position IF as a real major contender to browser based CMSā€™s.

@Seb I have to laugh. I had another one of those moments reading your post.

I NEVER knew that the template within the data feed could call an action when itā€™s moved in or out of focus. In fact, I never looked there. I figured it had the same properties of every regular group. Nope. This is like a hidden little gem.

Iā€™ve tested it out and it seems to work pretty well. Just need to work on some ways to optimize it a little bit and make sure it reliably enters all the data.

One thing I figured is that when users want to ā€˜updateā€™ the list, all the data should probably be cleared out before new rows are added. To do this, I tied a simple countdown timer to the number of rows that get added into the excel spreadsheet. Start the countdown, and an action removes each row. Cleared and ready to enter new data.

Much appreciated.

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Hi Seb! I was wondering if there was any update with 6.0 that would allow us to use Google Sheets. Or if there was an example you could offer using Sheetsu and Google sheets?