Using Android to submit to a Google Spreadsheet Form

Question

First time asking a question here. Usually I can find my answer without having to ask, but this time I'm stuck and can't figure out what I'm missing.

I'm just trying to have my Android app fill out a form on a website and submit it. I don't need the app to do anything with any data being sent back, just fill out the form and submit it. Basically I'm trying to collect the results of a voting app. I thought form submission would be simple so I created a Google Spreadsheet and made a form out of it. I figured I'd point the Android app to the form and then I would have all the data in the spreadsheet for later viewing. I can't get the Android app to actually fill out the form though. Here's the resources.

Form

Spreadsheet

private void submitVote(String outcome) {
    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost post = new HttpPost("https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/formResponse?hl=en_US&formkey=dDlwZzh4bGFvNFBxUmRsR0d2VTVhYnc6MQ&ifq");

    List<BasicNameValuePair> results = new ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair>();
    results.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.0.single", cardOneURL));
    results.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.1.single", outcome));
    results.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.2.single", cardTwoURL));

    try {
        post.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(results));
    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
        // Auto-generated catch block
        Log.e("YOUR_TAG", "An error has occurred", e);
    }
    try {
        client.execute(post);
    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
        // Auto-generated catch block
        Log.e("YOUR_TAG", "An error has occurred", e);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // Auto-generated catch block
        Log.e("YOUR_TAG", "An error has occurred", e);
    }
}

I made both the form and the spreadsheet public so feel free to mess around with it and try and get it to work yourself.

I get no errors from my program, no compile errors, no errors in DDMS. When I actually run the program and click the button that executes this code I can see the delay since right now this is in the UI thread, so I know it's executing it. It appears as if everything is working perfectly, but my spreadsheet doesn't update at all.

Any thoughts? I'm sure it's something stupid that I'm missing, but any help would be appreciated.

Here's the updated code with lots of logging and debugging stuff.

private void submitVote(String outcome) {
    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost post = new HttpPost("https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/formResponse?hl=en_US&formkey=dDlwZzh4bGFvNFBxUmRsR0d2VTVhYnc6MQ&ifq");

    List<BasicNameValuePair> results = new ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair>();
    results.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.0.single", cardOneURL));
    results.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.1.single", outcome));
    results.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.2.single", cardTwoURL));

    try {
        post.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(results));
    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
        // Auto-generated catch block
        Log.e("YOUR_TAG", "An error has occurred", e);
    }
    try {
        HttpResponse httpResponse = client.execute(post);
        Log.e("RESPONSE", "info: " + httpResponse);

        BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(httpResponse.getEntity().getContent()));
        String line;
        while ((line = rd.readLine()) != null) {
        Log.i("words", line);   
        }

        Intent intent = new Intent(this, ReadingView.class);
        intent.putExtra("html", line);
        startActivity(intent);
    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
        // Auto-generated catch block
        Log.e("YOUR_TAG", "client protocol exception", e);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // Auto-generated catch block
        Log.e("YOUR_TAG", "io exception", e);
    }
}

I use ReadingView.class for something else in my app, but hijacked it for this logging purpose right now. It only has an onCreate() method, which is below.

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.readingview);

    WebView mWebView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview);
    mWebView.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
    //mWebView.loadUrl(getIntent().getExtras().getString("url"));
    mWebView.loadData(getIntent().getExtras().getString("html"), "text/html", "utf-8");
}

Also worth noting that in the DDMS it only logs one output of line. I believe this is just because the html code is returned all as one line. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Answer 1

So I finally figured out what was going on. Through messing with manually encoding answers to the end of the form POST url I was able to find that the url it gave when viewing the source had encoding issues of it's own in it.

Here's the url from source:

<form action="https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/formResponse?hl=en_US&amp;formkey=dDlwZzh4bGFvNFBxUmRsR0d2VTVhYnc6MQ&amp;ifq" method="POST" id="ss-form">

But here's what it needs to be to actually work in the above code:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/formResponse?hl=en_US&formkey=dDlwZzh4bGFvNFBxUmRsR0d2VTVhYnc6MQ

The extra amp; was what was messing it up. For whatever reason it works without the last &ifq too, so I left that off. Anyway, here's completed code:

private void submitVote(String outcome) {
    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost post = new HttpPost("https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/formResponse?hl=en_US&formkey=dDlwZzh4bGFvNFBxUmRsR0d2VTVhYnc6MQ");

    List<BasicNameValuePair> results = new ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair>();
    results.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.0.single", cardOneURL));
    results.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.1.single", outcome));
    results.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.2.single", cardTwoURL));

    try {
        post.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(results));
    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
        // Auto-generated catch block
        Log.e("YOUR_TAG", "An error has occurred", e);
    }
    try {
        client.execute(post);
    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
        // Auto-generated catch block
        Log.e("YOUR_TAG", "client protocol exception", e);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // Auto-generated catch block
        Log.e("YOUR_TAG", "io exception", e);
    }
}

Hope this helps someone else when trying to work with Google Spreadsheet Forms. And thanks to @pandre for pointing me in the right direction.

Answer 2

The format, entry.0.single might not work in many cases. You must always find the proper id of the elements to create your POST request. This article provides the proper way to post data to a Google docs sheet via android app.

Answer 3

Have a look at the source for Acra. This uploads stack traces to a Google spreadsheet.

Answer 4

You probably are not seing errors because you are printing exceptions in the wrong way.
You are using e.printStackTrace(); which does not appear in DDMS/Logcat.

You should use instead
Log.e("YOUR_TAG, "An error has occurred", e);

which will log your error in DDMS/Logcat. You should see the stacktrace of the exception, and it will help you understand what's wrong.

EDIT: Have you checked what is returned in client.execute(post); ?
You should check what is being returned in the POST response by doing:

HttpResponse httpResponse = client.execute(post);

You can also run the application in debug mode and check where it is crashing / stopping