How to write a table (list of lists) to Google Spreadsheet using gspread

Question

I have a table which is presented as Python's list of lists and I'd like to write it down to some Google Spreadsheet using gspread library. However, it seems that gspread does not have such function out of the box. Of course I can use loop and update particular cells but it is very inefficient solution because it have to perform multiple requests (one request per cell). How to do it better?

Answer 1

You can use Worksheet.range to select the range you want to update, then write down the contents of your table to this range and use Worksheet.update_cells to update them in a batch.

The following code snipped is adapted from this tutorial.

def numberToLetters(q):
    """
    Helper function to convert number of column to its index, like 10 -> 'A'
    """
    q = q - 1
    result = ''
    while q >= 0:
        remain = q % 26
        result = chr(remain+65) + result;
        q = q//26 - 1
    return result

def colrow_to_A1(col, row):
    return numberToLetters(col)+str(row)

def update_sheet(ws, rows, left=1, top=1):
    """
    updates the google spreadsheet with given table
    - ws is gspread.models.Worksheet object
    - rows is a table (list of lists)
    - left is the number of the first column in the target document (beginning with 1)
    - top is the number of first row in the target document (beginning with 1)
    """

    # number of rows and columns
    num_lines, num_columns = len(rows), len(rows[0])

    # selection of the range that will be updated
    cell_list = ws.range(
        colrow_to_A1(left,top)+':'+colrow_to_A1(left+num_columns-1, top+num_lines-1)
    )

    # modifying the values in the range

    for cell in cell_list:
        val = rows[cell.row-top][cell.col-left]
        cell.value = val

    # update in batch
    ws.update_cells(cell_list)

You can use it in the following way:

import gspread
from oauth2client.service_account import ServiceAccountCredentials

# your auth here
scope = ['https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds']
credentials = ServiceAccountCredentials.from_json_keyfile_name('credentials.json', scope)

gc = gspread.authorize(credentials)
# your spreadsheet have to be shared with 'client_email' from credentials.json

gc = gspread.authorize(credentials)
# end of auth

spreadsheet = gc.open_by_url(my_url) # url to your spreadsheet here
ws = spreadsheet.sheet1 # or select any other sheet

table = [['one', 'two', 'three'], [4, 5, 6]]

# you may need to resize your worksheet so it have the neccessary cells
# ws.resize(len(table),len(table[0]))

update_sheet(ws, table)