February 2016
Beginner to intermediate
456 pages
9h 18m
English
Content preview from Going GAS
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Chapter 16. External APIs and Integration
Accessing external APIs, whether Google APIs or some other resource, is generally very easy. The Google infrastructure is super-fast, and accessing Internet services works at Google speed because Apps Script runs on that infrastructure. In previous examples, this kind of external data connectivity has been demonstrated a few times, but it’s such a strong Apps Script capability that it’s worth dedicating a few pages to it.
This chapter will demonstrate how to use the UrlFetchApp service to interact with:
- A REST service
- Get data and populate a spreadsheet with the results.
- A NoSQL database
- Use Firebase from Apps Script.
The UrlFetchApp service is somewhat equivalent to the VBA serverXMLHTTP object, but has a much simpler approach to headers and options.
REST API
This example will interact with the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) API, to see if there are any current delays at selected US airports. Given an airport (IATA) code, this API returns data like this:
{ delay: "false", IATA: "EWR", state: "New Jersey", name: "Newark International", weather: { visibility: 10, weather: "A Few Clouds", meta: { credit: "NOAA's National Weather Service", updated: "5:51 AM Local", url: "http://weather.gov/" }, temp: "62.0 F (16.7 C)", wind: "Northeast at 4.6mph" }, ICAO: "Kewr", city: "Newark", status: { reason: "No known delays for this airport.", closureBegin: "", endTime: "", minDelay: "", avgDelay: "", maxDelay: "", closureEnd: "", trend: "", type: ...Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.