Sheetsu

Dev tools

api backend from spreadsheet

SHOW HN2015

357points
98comments
#34of 2,565 in 2015
Top 2%of 2015 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

13 positive, 24 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 12 critical, out of 50 comments about the project. Thread score -0.04.

Idea: 11 for, 1 againstPerformance: 1 for, 3 againstExecution: 0 for, 3 againstPrivacy: 1 for, 2 againstDesign: 0 for, 2 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Simple way to get spreadsheet data into prototypes and small projects

    From 3 comments
    • Really great start! I could see this being very useful. If you were to extend the functionality to include full CRUD on entities, I think I would start using it immediately on…
      jmhuret on HN
    • Nice way to bypass zapier.com for some simple stuff because they can get expensive quickly. I just started using it to store a log of supersaas.com appointments in a Google…
      speleding on HN
    • Great My blog[1] uses a static side generator called middleman[2] and I was looking for a way to share 'quotes' in the website's subtitle. This seems to be the best solution! I…
      atmosx on HN
  • Good alternative to Zapier for simple tasks

    From 1 comment
    • Nice way to bypass zapier.com for some simple stuff because they can get expensive quickly. I just started using it to store a log of supersaas.com appointments in a Google…
      speleding on HN

Objections

  • Google Sheets does not handle heavy load; throttling and timeouts

    From 3 comments
    • I've used Google Spreadsheet as an "API" before (manually, not using this wrapper), and it is definitely not made to be used as such. Under heavy load, it slows down or times…
      rubbingalcohol on HN
    • Used this approach at a previous company and was amazed at first. Wondered why it wasn't more commonly used. A poor mans API! Whats not to like?? Then I found out why: when put…
      vikingcaffiene on HN
    • We had a similar experience. Google started giving us "Sharing quota for this file has been exceeded" errors.
      RachelF on HN
  • Requested access to all Google Drive files was a privacy concern

    From 2 comments
    • wow, it requires to access all my googledrive data and the spreadsheets.
      xchip on HN
    • I see that you request access to 'view and manage' the spreadsheets and files in my Google Drive? Is this for each spreadsheet/file or just the one I've linked to the in URL?
      Abundnce10 on HN
  • No CORS support so client-side JavaScript cannot call it

    From 2 comments
    • So I threw this into a website to try and load some data into a table, and get: XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://sheetsu.com/apis/d54d6315?sort=Description&order=asc. No…
      mkelley82 on HN
    • I ran into the same thing. Sheetsu apparently doesn't have CORS (http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/cors/) enabled so it won't work from client-side JS right now.
      pseudosavant on HN
  • Not truly RESTful; uses JSON status codes instead of HTTP status codes

    From 1 comment
    • API doesn't look very REST to me. It is basically just using HTTP as a JSON transport. The JSON contains a "status" code which appears to loosely follow the HTTP status code…
      nbevans on HN

Requests

  • CORS support

    From 2 comments
    • So I threw this into a website to try and load some data into a table, and get: XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://sheetsu.com/apis/d54d6315?sort=Description&order=asc. No…
      mkelley82 on HN
    • That'll be great. Is CORS support on the roadmap too?
      pseudosavant on HN
  • PUT and DELETE support

    From 2 comments
    • Really great start! I could see this being very useful. If you were to extend the functionality to include full CRUD on entities, I think I would start using it immediately on…
      jmhuret on HN
    • You can POST your data. PUT and DELETE soon.
      michaeloblak on HN
  • Access to multiple sheets in a workbook

    From 2 comments
    • Is there a way to get data from each sheet in a workbook? I'd love to use this, it is so simple. But it only seems to get the first sheet in my workbook.
      philbo87 on HN
    • Awesome! FWIW, my needs don't require any sort of "relational" concept as some comments have suggested, I just need to be able to do all existing operations on each sheet in the…
      philbo87 on HN
  • Access limited to a single file, not all Drive files

    From 2 comments
    • I see that you request access to 'view and manage' the spreadsheets and files in my Google Drive? Is this for each spreadsheet/file or just the one I've linked to the in URL?
      Abundnce10 on HN
    • Perfect! That was the only thing holding me back from getting started. Nice work, BTW!
      Abundnce10 on HN
  • HTTPS support

    From 1 comment
    • I would really prefer something like this to be a local library or something, adding another remote service in between negatively affects security and reliability. Especially in…
      TD-Linux on HN

Questions

  • How to prevent others from GETting the API if they know the URL

    From 1 comment
    • Awesome API, but one question. How do you prevent other people from doing a GET once they know your sheetsu API url?
      permeable on HN
  • Is there an API rate limit

    From 1 comment
  • Whether relational data between sheets is supported

    From 1 comment
    • Will you maintain relationship between sheets? For many API use-cases, I'd expect my data to be relational.
      JayeshSidhwani on HN

Alternatives named

  • Cloudstitch

    From 1 comment
    • Cloudstitch is another service that gives you a RESTful interface over a Google Sheet. http://www.cloudstitch.com/ I made a video showing how to send a Raspberry Pi's temperature…
      staticvar on HN
  • Tabletop

    From 1 comment
    • Google Spreadsheets is awesome as a quick and dirty CMS. I use it all the time at the newspaper i work for, in combination with Tabletop (https://github.com/jsoma/tabletop). Only…
      huskyr on HN
  • Blockspring

    From 1 comment
    • Sort of related (but the other way around): https://www.blockspring.com/
      madisonmay on HN
  • SpreadServe

    From 1 comment
    • You can do that with SpreadServe[1] now. Instead of Google docs it uses real Excel .xls spreadsheets and supports VBA and XLL addins. It turns your spreadsheets into async…
      osullivj on HN
  • CalcFusion

    From 1 comment
    • An alternative is also http://calcfusion.com/ ( disclaimer, I work there and we just launched ). It uses xls spreadsheets and is more oriented towards business rules and…
      julienmarie on HN
  • Sheetrock

    From 1 comment
    • I've used sheetrock (https://github.com/chriszarate/sheetrock) with good success in the past. But this definitely seems more refined.
      kleebeesh on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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