Hacking stuff together with Google Spreadsheets

Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey)                              

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

Other spreadsheets are

available

                             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

What Some basic spreadsheet tricks

• Filter/sort data• Import html and feeds

More advanced fun with Google Apps Script• Making your own interfaces• Integrating with other Google Services• Remixing 3rd party APIs

All the links used in this presentation are in http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog <- case sensitive

                             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

Basic tricks =UNIQUE

=FILTER

=SPLIT/JOIN

=IMPORT…

                             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

Example 1: Basic Voting System Using a Google Spreadsheet form as a basic voting

system Goto http://hawksey.info/form.html and for the question

identification enter: dev1 What do you think will happen next with Facebook

A. They’ll become ‘The Internet’

B. Mark Zuckerberg will end up in prison for tax avoidance

C. It will be revealed that Bill Gates travelled to an alternate universe kidnapping a younger version of himself before enrolling him a Stanford as … Mark Zuckerberg

D. All of the above Results

                             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

Example 2: Olympic Medal Table Pulling live data feeds from other sites (See Using

importHTML to create a Winter Olympics 2010 Medal Map)

Related spreadsheet

                             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

More advanced: Google Apps Script Google Apps Script is a JavaScript cloud scripting

language that provides easy ways to automate tasks across Google products and third party services.

• Create custom spreadsheet functions. 

• Automate repetitive processes and workflows. 

• Build rich graphical user interfaces and menus. 

• Link Google products with third party services.

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/

                             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

JavaScript executed server side

Cloud based scripting

Can publish ‘as service’ (exposes a url for you to hit with POST/GET)

Integrates with Google authentication

Apps Script 101

                             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

Example 3: Custom formula to dashboard project/course blog feeds Custom function to fetchUrlfromRSS()

Related postRelated spreadsheet

                             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

Example 4: Automating repetitive tasks and custom interfaces in Fast-Tracking Feedback

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

Example 5a: Linking to other services (Archiving Tweets – TAGS)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

Google Spreadsheet as a datastore

                             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

Google Spreadsheets as a datastore

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey

http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

Martin Hawksey@mhawksey

Questions?