Sheets API

Inspiration

Spreadsheets are still a thing 😵, we find it always and they will always get in queue again. When browsing for JavaScript libraries that works with spreadsheets I founded some that worked with Google Sheets and also provided interesting API solutions to use them.

This made me think that would be interesting to have an express-ready solution to work with a Google Spreadsheet either to mock a datastore or to even provide a solution when spreadsheets are heavily used, how about pushing reports to Google Spreadsheet from your express API and schedule it with CRON 🙀

What it does

Express Sheets provides basic CRUD actions towards Google Spreadsheets to create REST APIs or communicate with Google Spreadsheets

How we built it

We built it using google npm libraries, google-spreadsheet & express

Challenges we ran into

Querying spreadsheets as if it were a Database & complicated setup process from Google developers

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Managed to connect any tabs and data and have CRUD actions in one-liner, with:

router.use('/users', connectTab('Users'))

We get:

1. http://localhost:3030/api/users GET
2. http://localhost:3030/api/users/:id GET
3. http://localhost:3030/api/users POST
4. http://localhost:3030/api/users/:id PUT
5. http://localhost:3030/api/users/:id DELETE

What we learned

Google APIs and authentication methods

What's next for Sheets API

Would like to have a library around this so it can be used for different problem spaces, also:

• [ ] Add support for custom ID options
• [ ] Add support for (tab) table relations
• [ ] Support refresh token update
• [ ] Enhance setup documentation & process
• [ ] Add TypeScript support
• [ ] Add linter
• [ ] Add semantic-release config
• [ ] Create npm library
• [ ] Add tests
• [ ] Add a UI dashboard

Built With

• api
• express.js
• google-client-authentication
• node.js