I have been trying to fully understand the Google APIs so I can grab data from a Google spreadsheet that is private using Javascript.
I am using jQuery and D3.js to create a chart and I want to seamlessly pull the data without the user being redirected to an authorization page. I know I need to use OAuth, but I can't find any examples of how to do this seamlessly through an AJAX call.
https://developers.google.com/google-apps/spreadsheets/#authorizing_requests
This doesn't mention anything that makes it seem like I can do it without an OAuth dialog to the user.
To get a private spreadsheet page, you're going to have to authorize. See Google Spreadsheets API with OAuth 2.0 for Javascript for a complete working OAuth call for a Google Spreadsheet. I used this to create a working database using Google Spreadsheets.
Another way that might work: Fusion Tables. You will have to have a public sheet, but you can make it unlisted meaning it is only available through a link (which you only use in your javascript). It might want a location (as it was designed for spatial data), but you might be able to get around it or just use a dummy value.
Related
I am trying to import data from the following website to Google Sheets. I want to import all the matches for the day.
https://www.tournamentsoftware.com/tournament/b731fdcd-a0c8-4558-9344-2a14c267ee8b/Matches
I have tried importxml and importhtml, but it seems this does not work as the website uses JavaScript. I have also tried to use Apipheny without any success.
When using Apipheny, the error message is
'Failed to fetch data - please verify your API Request: {DNS error'
Tl;Dr
Adapted from my answer to How to know if Google Sheets IMPORTDATA, IMPORTFEED, IMPORTHTML or IMPORTXML functions are able to get data from a resource hosted on a website? (also posted by me)
Please spend some time learning how to use the browsers developers tools so you will be able to identify
if the data is already included in source code of the webpage as JSON / literal JavaScript object or in another form
if the webpage is doing a GET or POST requests to retrieve the data and when those requests are done (i.e. as some point of the page parsing, or on event)
if the requests require data from cookies
Brief guide about how to use the web browser to find useful details about the webpage / data to import
Open the source code and look if the required data is included. Sometimes the data is included as JSON and added to the DOM using JavaScript. In this case it might be possible to retrieve the data by using the Google Sheets functions or URL Fetch Service from Google Apps Script.
Let say that you use Chrome. Open the Dev Tools, then look at the Elements tab. There you will see the DOM. It might be helpful to identify if the data that you want to import besides being on visible elements is included in hidden / not visible elements like <script> tags.
Look at Source, there you might be able to see the JavaScript code. It might include the data that you want to import as JavaScript object (commonly referred as JSON).
There are a lot of questions about google-sheets +web-scraping that mentions problems using importhtml and/or importxml that already have answers and even many include code (JavaScript snippets, Google Apps Script functions, etc.) that might save you to have to use an specialized web-scraping tool that has a more stepped learning curve. At the bottom of this answer there is a list of questions about using Google Sheets built-in functions, including annotations of the workaround proposed.
On Is there a way to get a single response from a text/event-stream without using event listeners? ask about using EventSource. While this can't be used on server side code, the answer show how to use the HtmlService to use it on client-side code and retrieve the result to Google Sheets.
As you already realized, the Google Sheets built-in functions importhtml(), importxml(), importdata() and importfeed() only work with static pages that do not require signing in or other forms of authentication.
When the content of a public page is created dynamically by using JavaScript, it cannot be accessed with those functions, by the other hand the website's webmaster may also purposefully have prevented web scraping.
How to identify if content is added dynamically
To check if the content is added dynamically, using Chrome,
Open the URL of the source data.
Press F12 to open Chrome Developer Tools
Press Control+Shift+P to open the Command Menu.
Start typing javascript, select Disable JavaScript, and then press Enter to run the command. JavaScript is now disabled.
JavaScript will remain disabled in this tab so long as you have DevTools open.
Reload the page to see if the content that you want to import is shown, if it's shown it could be imported by using Google Sheets built-in functions, otherwise it's not possible but might be possible by using other means for doing web scraping.
According to Wikipedia,
Web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction is data scraping used for extracting data from websites.
Use of robots.txt to block Web crawlers
The webmasters could use robots.txt file to block access to website. In such case the result will be #N/A Could not fetch URL.
Use of User agent
The webpage could be designed to return a special a custom message instead of the data.
Below there are more details about how Google Sheets built-in "web-scraping" functions works
IMPORTDATA, IMPORTFEED, IMPORTHTML and IMPORTXML are able to get content from resources hosted on websites that are:
Publicly available. This means that the resource doesn't require authorization / to be logged in into any service to access it.
The content is "static". This mean that if you open the resource using the view source code option of modern web browsers it will be displayed as plain text.
NOTE: The Chrome's Inspect tool shows the parsed DOM; in other works the actual structure/content of the web page which could be dynamically modified by JavaScript code or browser extensions/plugins.
The content has the appropriated structure.
IMPORTDATA works with structured content as csv or tsv doesn't matter of the file extension of the resource.
IMPORTFEED works with marked up content as ATOM/RSS
IMPORTHTML works with marked up content as HTML that includes properly markedup list or tables.
IMPORTXML works with marked up content as XML or any of its variants like XHTML.
The content doesn't exceeds the maximum size. Google haven't disclosed this limit but the below error will be shown when the content exceeds the maximum size:
Resource at url contents exceeded maximum size.
Google servers are not blocked by means of robots.txt or the user agent.
On W3C Markup Validator there are several tools to checkout is the resources had been properly marked up.
Regarding CSV check out Are there known services to validate CSV files
It's worth to note that the spreadsheet
should have enough room for the imported content; Google Sheets has a 10 million cell limit by spreadsheet, according to this post a columns limit of 18278, and a 50 thousand characters as cell content even as a value or formula.
it doesn't handle well large in-cell content; the "limit" depends on the user screen size and resolution as now it's possible to zoom in/out.
References
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/javascript/disable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping
Related
Using Google Apps Script to scrape Dynamic Web Pages
Scraping data from website using vba
Block Website Scraping by Google Docs
Is there a way to get a single response from a text/event-stream without using event listeners?
Software Recommendations
Web scraping tool/software available for free?
Recommendations for web scraping tools that require minimal installation
Web Applications
The following question is about a different result, #N/A Could not fetch URL
Inability to use IMPORTHTML in Google sheets
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ImportXML is good for basic tasks, but it won't get you too far if you are serious in scraping:
The approach only works with the most basic websites (no SPAs rendered in browsers can be scraped this way. Any basic web scraping protection or connectivity issue breaks the process, and there isn't any control over HTTP request geo location, or number of retries) - and Yahoo Finance is not a simple website
If the target website data requires some cleanup post-processing, it's getting very complicated since you are now "programming with Excel formulas", rather a painful process compared to regular code writing in conventional programming languages
There isn't any proper launch and cache control, so the function can be triggered occasionally and if the HTTP request fails, cells will be populated with ERR! values
I recommend using proper tools (automation framework and scraping engine which can render JavaScript-powered websites) and use Google Sheets just for basic storage purposes:
https://youtu.be/uBC752CWTew (Pipedream for automation and ScrapeNinja engine for scraping)
I Cant find any workable solution. Can anyone help? Need to make translate from 1st sheet in one doc to the second. About 60.000 changeable rows.
You can use the Google Translate function directly in your sheet
If you want more advanced/customized calls, I recently wrote an article where I use the current user credential and I call a Google Cloud API (not the translate, but the principle is the same)
I've been putting together a Google Sheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Pp9QyrF-aaM6cT9mOs9BWODwbSc2ZHXAovCU2fxQ6Uc/edit?usp=sharing)
that automatically uses the Google Custom Search API (I set up a free account to test) to pull in images to the table from a feed provided by the Google Custom Search API.
The problem is that Google's Custom Search API service seems to be totally unreliable and inconsistent, with the generated search URL's (results in column S of the linked spreadsheet) sometimes returning a useable result (and picture), sometimes returning an empty feed (for no obvious reason) or sometimes giving me a "This site can’t be reached" "ERR_INVALID_RESPONSE" error which is equally inexplicable since the URLs are all formed by the same code.
So I've had a look at the Microsoft Bing Image Search API to see if their results were more reliable and found that I can also use a URL to return an XML feed of results (which I could then parse within Google Sheets to get the image links (i hope!).
The problem is that with the awful Google Custom Search API, I could at least put the authentication information in the URL itself so Google Sheets just followed the link and got the data from the search result. With Bing, which produces much more reliable results, it asks for authentication via a browser dialog and states that "Only Basic and OAuth are supported".
Now I've looked into how I could get Google Sheets to authenticate the URL queries but haven't had much luck figuring it out.
Also saw that you can apparently authenticate using the Basic method but the account key needs to be converted to Base64 and a colon added in front of it but this then needs to be set in the (http?) headers: How do i return JSON results from BING Search Engine API.
Can headers be set via a script in Google Sheets and/or can the Bing Search API urls be authorised from within Google Sheets in some way?
Otherwise is there anything obvious as to what I'm doing wrong with the Google Search URL's that return such broken and inconsistent results?
I'd prefer to get the Bing Search URL's authorised within Google Sheets ideally.
Thanks
I'm working on some .Net code to collect some data on a server and put it in a Google Spreadsheet. The job needs to run once a day, clear out the sheet and repopulate it. I have all that working, but I can't get the authorization right. I can do it with my personal Google credentials, and I can get it to work with OAUTH by allowing the app to manipulate all my spreadsheets using the https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds scope. But, what I really want to do is allow my script to read and write just one sheet. Is that possible, and how would I do that?
You are using very old scopes. Look at the drive.file scope
https://developers.google.com/drive/web/scopes
Its not possible using the spreadsheets API. That api is very old and doesnt have a scope for indivdual files.
it might be possible by creating a spreadsheet using the drive API by uploading a CSV with conversion, but you will need permission to create new drive files and that also means permission to the entire drive.
Workaround: Create a new google account and share the spreadsheet with it. Do the OAuth using the new account.
#Zig Mandel is right - the API (Gdata style) wants access to all spreadsheets. But you can workaround the problem using a new account.
I'm using a Google spreadsheet as a template that is copied at form submission. This spreadsheet has several custom functions.
I've run into two problems on spreadsheets copied from the template:
A custom menu function that allows the user to create a PDF of the active sheet cannot be authorized from the front end -- it simply hangs. It appears oAuth authorization can only occur from the code editor, which I can't expect users to do.
Users will click a custom menu function, get the authorization dialog, authorize, then forget to click again to run the function.
Is there a way to have users authorize all functions, including oAuth (for PDF creation), as soon as they open the sheet?
Just in case someone else happens upon this, I think I found my answer:
It appears that functions using oAuth can't be authorized from the front-end. It also appears that Google has no intention of making it available in the future unless you want to write your own authorization flow. I, for one, do not.
I did, however, find a work-around. By including the functions that need authorization in a library and including that library in your script, users only need to authorize a function once, no matter how many spreadsheets call the function.
There are only 12 users in my organization, so I got off easy on this one -- I can go to each of their computers and authorize the functions in the library once, and that's that.
Hope this helps someone!