Google Apps Hacks

62 GOOGLE APPS HACKS

HaCK 22:





By automatically populating your web page with values from

Spreadsheet cells and addressing them via JavaScript, you can

create a mini-CMS.

Do you want to enable your friend or colleague to quickly edit some text on your home page, but

don’t want to set up a big content management system (CMS)? Use a Google Spreadsheet as data

source, an idea rst presented by Todd Huss at http://gabrito.com.

To get started, create a new spreadsheet at http://docs.google.com and insert two column titles: one

labeled “name”, the other “content”. Then create two sample rows, using the names “headline1” and

“paragraph1”, as shown in Figure 3-13, and ll the content elds with some text of your choice.

You probably already have an HTML page where you want to include these values now. I’ll pick a

company I’m calling “Wine for Sale 2000.” Right now the web page is a static le that I haven’t yet

connected to the spreadsheet, as shown in Figure 3-14.

To embed the dynamic headlines into the HTML page, you rst need to publish the spreadsheet

via the “Publish” tab. Select the “Automatically re-publish . . . ” option as well. The spreadsheet will

now have a public address like the following:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pgFb21wR3O90hBx3GJULxOQ

I highlighted the “key” part because you’ll need it now. Include the following ...