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Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app

(www.zerosheets.com)
356 points joaovcoliveira | 5 comments | 12 Apr 24 16:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

Hello everyone!

At a company I worked for, we needed to develop an MVP (basically a web page) and apply certain business logic to a Google Drive spreadsheet that was frequently updated by the Sales team.

In this case, we had two options:

Develop a backend to replace the current spreadsheet and have the sales team use it as a new "backoffice" - This would take a very long time, and if the hypothesis we were testing was wrong, it would be time wasted.

Create the web page and use Google's SDK to extract data from the spreadsheet.

We chose to go with the second option because it was quicker. Indeed, it was much faster than creating a new backoffice. But not as quick as we imagined. Integrating with Google's SDK requires some effort, especially to handle the OAuth logic, configure it in the console, and understand the documentation (which is quite shallow, by the way).

Anyway! We did the project and I realized that maybe other devs might have encountered similar issues. Therefore, I developed a tool that transforms Google spreadsheets into "realtime APIs" with PATCH, GET, POST, and DELETE methods.

Since it's a product for devs, I think it would be cool to hear your opinions. It's still quite primitive, but the basic features already work.

https://zerosheets.com

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altdataseller ◴[12 Apr 24 19:55 UTC] No.40016983[source]▶
I rather use Google Sheets as the front end of my app. Have it call endpoints in my backend and populate the sheet with the data, and auto-generate charts based on that data. Easy, no-nonsense dashboard. Add in some dropdown menus and inputs and you got yourself a good enuff frontend
replies(1): >>40019589 #
1. _adamb ◴[13 Apr 24 01:30 UTC] No.40019589[source]▶
Me too! I've normalized it in our organizations. We use a combination of app scripts and what we call "Single Button Apps" that are web pages that have a text box (paste the URL of the Gsheet) and a "go" button. The input and output are all in the sheet, but putting the button in a web app makes it easy to iterate on feature set as/if the application grows. https://blog.adambuilds.com/sba-not-spa-the-most-minimal-ui
replies(1): >>40020094 #
2. ipince ◴[13 Apr 24 02:56 UTC] No.40020094[source]▶
I read your comment and your blog post and I still don't understand what happens when I put a link to a sheet in the text box and click Go.. what happens? You say your inputs and outputs are all in the sheet.. ok.. what does the button do? Are you just calling some API and giving it the sheet as the input, and then writing the output of the call back to the sheet? So then these Single Button Apps are just API endpoints that you're calling with sheets instead of json or, say Postman (if you want a nicer UI)?

I think I'm failing to see the point here :-/

replies(1): >>40020919 #
3. afro88 ◴[13 Apr 24 06:15 UTC] No.40020919[source]▶
Same here. If the idea was to make it so non-technical people can use the google sheets + API app, just put a script in the sheet that calls the API? It will appear in a menu inside google sheets itself
replies(2): >>40022009 #>>40022265 #
4. johtso ◴[13 Apr 24 10:28 UTC] No.40022009{3}[source]▶
You can even put a button on a sheet to trigger a script
5. dorgo ◴[13 Apr 24 11:14 UTC] No.40022265{3}[source]▶
I used to put buttons in the menu ( or even side panels ), but nowdays I draw a big button and attach a apps script function to it. Looks more bad ass.