We're creating a custom table in SAP comprising all of the information we need and the customer needs the report from this table uploaded to Google Docs. We do not use Business By Design. Is there any other quicka nd easy way to upload our report?
I don't know much about SAP but the Documents List API has methods to programmatically upload a document to Google Docs: https://developers.google.com/google-apps/documents-list/.
For instance, if you can export the SAP table as a csv file, that can be automatically converted into a Google Spreadsheet during the upload process.
You could also go with a no-programming required solution and install the Google Drive app on a machine with access to the files for automatic sync up to Google Drive:
http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2374989
suggest you take a look at the SAP Developer Network (SDN) / SAP Community Network (SCN) where there is a project called ABAP2GAPPS that has done this.
Note the ABAP2GAPPS example is a bit difficult to figure out (but you can learn a lot from it), and it also uses the OAuth2 'authorization code flow" OAuth2.0 flow/pattern, which requires an end-user 'consent' in an browser pop-up...so if you want to push up a file from ABAP automatically from a background job without end-user interaction then ABAP2GAPPS is not the full answer (but again, ABAP2GAPPS is a great example, suggest you look at it.)
We recently were able to achieve an interface from SAP ABAP to the Google Fusion Table API using OAuth2, with only about a 100 lines of ABAP...and the techniques we employed could be used on any of the Google API's...here's a link to the video:
Link to YouTube video interface ABAP to Google API
hope you find this helpful
Related
I have an idea for a web app project, however, due to not having any programming knowledge, I'm first asking here for directions. Essentially, I wonder if the idea is realistic and what the most effective way could be for me to tackle it.
I want to combine several open-data sources, some in the form of API's (e.g. Google maps), others in the form of statistics in Excel sheets. Like a Mashup of different sources? The idea is to use the data to perform some data crunching and in effect provide some insights from this data in an aggregated way. I have previously played around with dashboards during an internship and I am attracted by the idea to maybe produce a Single page application for my idea with some visualisation. Any thoughts on this?
I have looked at the following services online, but I have no idea if they can help me produce a web app which aggregates different data sources and that allows for nice presentation:
Zoho Creator,
QlikSense,
Sproutcore,
Caspio
Any thoughts on this are highly appreciated!
Best regards
If you’re not a developer and would like to get started immediately, then you could get started by signing up with Zoho Creator. Its intuitive yet easy to use builder lets you setup web app in minutes.
Regarding your query for aggregation from different data sources, Zoho Creator provides REST API that allows you to access external data sources to interface with your web applications.
Zoho Creator allows you to setup the perfect web-app on a secure cloud with admin level access to handle the necessary permissions and manage data.
You can customize the Reports in your Zoho Creator application using Report Settings to suit your needs. Web-App can be created by converting a CSV/Excel into a full-featured Web DB / app in seconds.
You can check out our help videos or register for our upcoming webinar to know more about Zoho Creator.
Happy Building!!
Disclaimer: I work for Zoho Creator
I would like to know if it's possible to view a Google Spreadsheet Doc as a PDF without first manually converting it as a PDF? I don't want to share a link directly to the spreadsheet, I want to share a link to a PDF version of it which ends up looking better (in Print View rather than Spreadsheet Document View)
I know I can Print > Save as PDF, then download to local machine, then upload and save somewhere on my server. But is there is a way to be able to view the spreadsheet as a PDF.
I have Google'd this and found nothing. The best I could come up with is the Google Document Viewer (https://docs.google.com/viewer) but that does not seem to give mt the option I am looking for. Further, I do not want to install any Chrome plugins, etc. because I want to be able to share a link to the PDF with people but not have to have them install a plugin to see the doc.
Unfortunately, what you are trying to do and the way you are trying to do it is not a capability within Google Docs. Sorry.
I think the best way is to use Google Drive API to write own script that will do this job. I mean:
You have a web server
Write a simple method in any web technology, such as PHP, Python, Java, C#, whatever you like and your server is able to serve. This method is connected to the google drive through it's API to your account, knows which spreadsheet to take care of and how to understand the columns. This spread should be parsed to HTML and with some popular tool (proper for your programming language or server's operating system) you create the PDF. The method should create HTTP response with header type: application/pdf.
You provide interested people with the link under which your method is available.
I guess this reference should help you to use Google API:
How to download the resources:
https://developers.google.com/drive/web/manage-downloads
How to convert (i.e. to PDF) and open the resources in your own application:
https://developers.google.com/drive/web/integrate-open#open_and_convert_google_docs_in_your_app
I hope this helps.
i am currently work on an IOS project which is required to read data from Spreadsheet in google drive. I have done some research and i found Google APIs client library for Objective C. However, i still have problem of retrieving data from spreadsheet. i find only the sample code that can read the file in drive from the drive that user login. But what i actually want in this project is using Google Drive as the Database. In short i want to retrieve data from the url like this https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoYC7S60-ywcdHVZYzh4ZlZ1Y3J5R2ZGbnBqY09jdkE&usp=sharing.
So is there a solution for this kind of problem? and if there a good site that provide a good tutorial to this kindda problem?
Google apps script is probably a simpler option. You can set it up as a web app, and read/write to the spreadsheet via the webapp. The google-spreadsheet-api is hard to use as there is little good documentation.
Refer, Google's Sample Code it can help you. You can also use GData Objective C Client to use it.
I am thinking about app that will use google form and I need to create forms from that app. Is there a way how can I create form in google docs without using website but through some api or some other way?
I can offer an idea for a solution using Google App Script.
Since the beginning of 2013 you can create new forms using the App Script Forms Service API quite easily.
var form = FormApp.create(title)
.setDescription(description)
.setConfirmationMessage('Thanks for responding!')
;
The problem now is how to get that App Script running from your non App Script code.
You can use App Script to create a Web App that reacts to HTTP GET requests.
So putting it together, you may be able to create an App Script Web App that reacts to a GET request and when it gets the right URL parameters, it creates the form.
(Nov 2020) Yes, it is possible to programmatically create Google Forms. You can do it with Google Apps Script using its Forms service. You can also extend the code to read in the contents from Google Docs (with Apps Script's Document service) and use it for the creation of Google Forms.
I created a Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) Add-on, which you can think of as a Google Docs extension, called GFormIt. Its original purpose was intended for teachers to write exams/quizzes, possibly with answers, in Google Docs, then automatically convert them to Google Forms to distribute to students who submit their answers into Google Sheets (the destination for Google Forms submissions).
Furthermore, if you (the teacher) provided answers to your test questions, GFormIt would also auto-submit your answers to the Sheet as if you were a student. If you do that, and use a tool like Flubaroo to grade the exam, you could designate your row in the Sheet as “the answer key.” You can learn more about how it works, including viewing a short video, at the GFormIt page linked above.
This Google Docs add-on, along with others for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, etc., are all certified/validated by Google and available for free to anyone from the Google Workspace Marketplace. (However, your admins may have to grant permissions for you to try to install them to your corporate Workspace account.) If interested in building your own add-on, please see the developer documentation and perhaps some of my introductory videos to get started, the most relevant being the one linked to at the top of this answer.
Apps Script is a serverless Google technology, meaning you write your code (using JavaScript) in the browser, and it is hosted by & executed on Google servers. If you wanted to create your own web app (and hosted anywhere), you would have to wait for a Google Forms REST API which does not exist at the time of this writing. (If we ever launch one, you'll find its documentation at https://developers.google.com/forms along with the others like Sheets https://developers.google.com/sheets, Gmail https://developers.google.com/gmail, Drive https://developers.google.com/drive, etc.)
Earlier this year (Mar 2022) the new Google Forms Api graduated from Beta. It is more powerful that the previous versions and caters for two main use cases:
Automated form creation and editing: Enables automated form creation
and editing. Enables rapid form generation from large volume question
banks or other data backends.
Reaction to Form responses: The API also enables developers to build
automations for acting on incoming responses. Examples include
developing real-time dashboards or visualizations and triggering
business workflows based on response data.
We have used it to build an integration that Creates documents and slides each time a form is completed: www.portant.co/google-forms-to-docs and it works really well.
I think the other key use case looks like it would be a good fit for you and others looking for a solution like this.
Cheers, James
Sorry, the API doesn't support programmatically creating forms.
The documentation for Google Documents List API, seems to say that you can create a local document and upload it. Is there no way to actually create and edit a document on Google Docs through an API?
While the docs call it "uploading", everything boils down to sending an appropriately formatted HTTP POST request, so of course it can actually be a new creation rather than an actual "upload" of an otherwise existing file. (Creation through POST requests is similar to what's normally described as a REST API, though in real REST you'd typically use a PUT request instead of course).
You just need to create a blob of data representing your document in any of the formats listed here -- depending on your programming language, simplest may be text/csv for a spreadsheet and application/rtf for a text-document -- then put in in an appropriately formatted POST data. For example, to make a spreadsheet in the simplest way (no metadata), you could POST something like:
POST /feeds/default/private/full HTTP/1.1
Host: docs.google.com
GData-Version: 3.0
Authorization: <your authorization header here>
Content-Length: 81047
Content-Type: text/csv
Slug: Example Spreadsheet
ColumnA, ColumnB
23, 45
Each specific programming language for which a dedicated API is supplied may offer help with this not-so-hard task; for example, in Python, per the docs, the API recommends using ETags to avoid overwriting changes when multiple clients are simultaneously "uploading" (i.e., creating or updating docs). But preparing the POST directly is always possible, since the almost-REST API is documented as the protocol underlying all language-specific APIs.
Alex's answer, while undoubtedly correct, begs the question: "how do I do that via the Google Docs API?"
Here's a way (in Python, 'cause I'm that kind of guy):
import gdata.docs.service
import StringIO
client = gdata.docs.service.DocsService()
client.ClientLogin(username, password,
source='Spreadsheet Creation Example')
content = 'COL_A, COL_B, COL_C, COL_D\ndata1, data2, data3, data4'
ms = gdata.MediaSource(file_handle=StringIO.StringIO(content),
content_type='text/csv',
content_length=len(content))
entry = client.Upload(ms, 'Test Spreadsheet')
This is a small mashup of techniques that I found in http://code.google.com/p/gdata-python-client/source/browse/tests/gdata_tests/docs/service_test.py , which I in turn found via this post from the Google Group for the GData Docs API.
The key insights (for me anyway) were:
realizing that the MediaSource constructor's formal parameter "file_handle" will take any file-like object, and
discovering (as the OP's followup to the Google Group post mentions) that the unit tests are a great source of examples
(I wasn't able to find the Python-specific developer's guide referenced by Alex's doc link -- possibly it's been lost or buried in Google's move of documentation assets from code.google.com to developers.google.com. Alex's link now redirects to the more generic document that shows mostly .NET and Java examples, but only a little Python.)
As of Feb 4, 2019, Google Docs now has a REST API.
See documentation:
https://developers.google.com/docs/api/
(Sep 2019) There are 3 ways to create a document in Google Docs programmatically:
Google Docs REST API (low-level; Python, JS/Node.js, Java, C#/.NET, PHP, Ruby, Go, etc.)
Google Apps Script (high-level; JavaScript-only)
Google Drive API (low-level like Docs API above; both alternatives above can create or edit documents, but this one is create- or delete-only plus editing sharing/permissions)
The Docs API was officially launched in Feb 2019. I produced a high-level video overview of what a mail merge application using the API would look like. (It's not a full-fledged G Suite Dev Show episode but does link to a working sample.) Check out the various guides on using the API, including Quickstart examples in a variety of programming languages.
OTOH, Apps Script is a simpler, higher-level alternative. It's a custom server-side JavaScript runtime supporting apps that are hosted+executed in Google's cloud. Use objects to talk to various Google APIs (G Suite & beyond) without knowledge of HTTP, REST, nor OAuth2. You can also access external databases with its JDBC Service or call other apps via its URL Fetch Service.
With Apps Script, you can create standalone applications, document-bound applications (only works for a single document), or Google Docs Add-ons to extend the functionality of Google Docs. Here are the Google Docs Apps Script overview page as well as the Apps Script reference documentation for Google Docs (Document Service). I've also produced a variety of Apps Script videos if that's your preferred learning vehicle. If you're new to Apps Script, see my answer to a similar SO question for more learning resources.
Typically the Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc., APIs are used to perform document-oriented functionality while the Drive API is used primarily for file-based operations. However "create" is a special case where you can use either. See my answer to another SO question which shows the difference b/w creating a new Google Sheet via the Sheets API vs. the Drive API. (Both samples in Python.) Read this if you're interested in managing sharing or updating permissions of Google Docs.