Chrome Extension Writing to Google Spreadsheet [closed]

Question

I've been doing some research and for some reason can't find a good example showing this anywhere, and I am starting to wonder if it's even possible.

What's I'm looking to do is to have my extension write data within a Google Spreadsheet, so that the sheet is being used as a database.

Does anyone have any documentation that I could follow through? Considering that the Spreadsheet API doesn't seem to allow JavaScript, is that even possible?

THanks.

Answer 1

Yes, it is definitely possible. I have used the Spreadsheet API extensively using Javascript. You'll need to use the Protocol version of the API as documented here: https://developers.google.com/google-apps/spreadsheets/

This requires sending signed requests using OAuth2 (the older auth protocols aren't really reliable anymore.) so I suggest using an OAuth2 library like JSO. https://github.com/andreassolberg/jso

When writing your javascript you'll need to write functions that create an XML string to interface with the Protocol API. Parsing the responses is pretty straight forward. I've included a snippet of the code I've used. You can also see my answer to a related question using JQuery here. JQuery .ajax POST to Spreadsheets API?

function appendSpreadsheet(){   //Constructs the XML string to interface with the Spreadsheet API.  //This function adds the value of the param foo to the cell in the first empty row in the column called 'columnTitle'.   //The Spreadsheet API will return an error if there isn't a column with that title.  function constructAtomXML(foo){   var atom = ["<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>",           '<entry xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:gsx="http://schemas.google.com/spreadsheets/2006/extended">',//'--END_OF_PART\r\n',           '<gsx:columnTitle>',foo,'</gsx:columnTitle>',//'--END_OF_PART\r\n',           '</entry>'].join('');   return atom;  };   var params = {  'method': 'POST',  'headers': {    'GData-Version': '3.0',    'Content-Type': 'application/atom+xml'  },  'body': constructAtomXML(foo)  };   var docId //Get this from the spreadsheet URL or from the Google Drive API.  var worksheetId = 'od6'; //The worksheet Id for the first sheet is 'od6' by default.   url = 'https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/list/'+docId+'/'+worksheetId+'/private/full';   sendSignedRequest(url, handleSuccess, params); //Use your OAuth2 lib }