I had several questions regarding the usability of a "G Suite/Google Apps API." I would like to integrate some sort of document/spreadsheet/presentation management directly into an application I am building.
This service would have to have the ability to import and export to DOC/XLS/PPT/PDF etc..., so something like Feng Office (if you have ever heard of it), wouldn't suit this need.
For this purpose, I'm looking into such a thing exists. Before I would begin this endeavor, I was wondering:
Do the G Suite/Google Apps productivity tools allow documents/spreadsheets/presentations to be created, read, updated, and deleted all from a third-party application?
Would potential users have to have a Google account in order to use document/spreadsheet/presentation editor?
Could multiple users on my application access files under one Google account, if an account is needed at all?
Last, is it possible to skip a Google account, and let Google docs directly access and save documents on my local server?
Sorry for the crash list of questions, but if there is anyone who could help with these, it would be much appreciated.
spryno724
Yes.
Not necessarily, you can have your backend script sign in as you, or even better, an admin account set-up specifically for your app.
Yes, see #2.
I don't think so.
(Feb 2017) The executive summary is that you can do what you envision, either by using G Suite (formerly Google Apps) APIs or Google Apps Script. TL;DR below in response to your "mini-questions".
Yes; you can do it with...
Individual app REST APIs, i.e., Sheets API, Slides API, etc., or just the Google Drive API.
Keep in mind that the Drive API is used for file-oriented functionality (create, delete, import/export, etc.) while the individual APIs are for document-oriented functionality (editing, formatting, etc.)
To learn about using the REST APIs, see the first few videos in this playlist, specifically videos 2, 3, and 4 to start with
An alternative that's more like using "services" vs. APIs but that can also programmatically CRUD G Suite documents is Google Apps Script, server-side JavaScript apps that are hosted at and run in Google's cloud. If interested, I created an Apps Script intro video for you.
FYI, videos 5, 8, 22, and 24 from the playlist above are for Apps Script if you want to pursue that
Note that neither Google Docs nor Google Forms currently have REST APIs, but you can programmatically access them from Apps Script.
Yes, users need to have a Google account but they don't have to create a Gmail address. See this page on creating Google accounts without Gmail. (If they do want to create a Gmail address, then they can use this page instead.)
Yes, you would use the Drive API to set the sharing permissions with your users. See this page on Permissions and this one on Sharing for more info.
Not really; you need at least one Google account in order to access Google Drive where the files would be stored. You can, however, manage the files on your own, then import to Drive and export from Drive to allow your users to edit on your servers then push them back to Drive. For more info on import/export formats/MIMEtypes, see my answer to another SO question.
Related
I have a series of videos uploaded to a specific Google Drive folder, and I'd like to get the view count for each video/file. Literally as simple as "file_id" "10 views".
From extensive research, it seems this is quite simply impossible within Google Apps Script today? Per this old answer, both the Drive API and the Drive Activity API only report edit or comment activity, while view activity is ignored. The Reports API does support this, but only for users with Admin access in an Enterprise account (not for us plebes who just want to know view counts on our own files).
And per this Apps Script documentation, it seems that onOpen() triggers don't run for views (which blocks a "view_count + 1 on open of this specific file" sort of analytics).
Before I give up, I figured I'd run it past this brilliant community: am I missing anything? Is there some way to get view count on videos stored and accessed through Google Drive?
Answer:
You are correct in your findings that you can not get video view count information through the Drive API. You must use the Admin SDK to obtain this information.
Feature Request:
You can however let Google know that this is a feature that is important for access to their APIs, and that you would like to request they implement it.
Google's Issue Tracker is a place for developers to report issues and make feature requests for their development services, I'd urge you to make a feature request there. The best component to file this under would be the Google Drive component, with the Feature Request template.
I recently created a Google script for my documents but I'd like to know how to authorize all my documents to execute this one, not only the document that I used to develop the script...
First, Is that possible without passing on the store?
I have great news for you! Google says they're working on that!
But also bad news. They've been working on it for four years now, which really means they're not working on it.
See Issue 489, star it and wait for the announcement of project completion. He he!
The topic of sharing scripts among multiple documents has been covered before:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5334751/how-do-i-share-a-script-i-wrote-with-my-co-workers-on-the-same-google-apps-accou?rq=1
Libraries.
How to share one Google Apps script between few documents?
Libraries.
What happened to the "Publish to Gallery" option in Google Apps Script?
The gallery was retired.
Google Apps Script add code to copy of a document
Can't do it.
Option 1: As those previous answers suggested (and I'm sure there are more), turn your script into a library, then in every document you want to use it you "just" need to add a script that includes the library, and functions that call the library functions.
Option 2: Any stand-alone script can be "tested as an add-on", which allows you to associate a script with any document. Unfortunately, just one document at a time.
Option 3: (Your own suggestion.) You are able to publish through the store, but limit the visibility just to yourself (any account), people with the link (any account) or your organization (domain accounts). If you're using a consumer account, you'll have to pay $5 to register as a developer for this privilege.
I'm uncertain about whether you'd need to wait for a review cycle, or if your add-on would go live immediately, or if you'd be able to skip providing help documentation, support web site, etc. - maybe someone else can weigh in on that via comment, and / or update this answer with details.
The advantage to this would be the ability to have the script in any of your documents, without adding scripts to them.
Consumer account add-on visibility options:
Corporate domain account:
I've added a few scripts to a Google Spreadsheet. One uses the Drive API. First time a person runs the script he has to manuallly enable access to Drive API and click on the link to Google Developer Console and enable access to Drive API.
There are about 100 people in my organisation who are going to use this spreadsheet and is there some way for me as a domain owner to enable Drive API so that the users don't have to do it by themselves?
/Magnus
Your users are going to have to create there own application in Google Developers console, and authenticate themselves.
Google Made a change recently that makes it against terms of service for you as a developer to give out your client id from Google developer console. So they will need to make there own. There is also no API that will let you automate this for them either.
As for authenticating that is the nature of authentication. Each user must give the application /or in this case script access to there account.
Sounds like you are doing everything correctly right now. It may seam time consuming but that is the way things have to be done.
I want to develop a comercial App that works in connection with gmail, Google calendar and other Google products. For what I see, Google Apps Script would give me the required functionality but I cant seem to find the answer to a couple of deployment issues. In the Google Apps Marketplace article on Wikipedia I read this:
Google Apps Marketplace is a product of Google Inc. It is an online store designed to help people and organizations to discover, purchase, and deploy integrated cloud web applications that work with Google Apps (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, etc.) and with third party software. Some apps are free, some are paid for. Apps are based on Google APIs or on Google Apps Script.
But then, looking into the Google Apps documentation, the only distribution mechanisms I find are the "Script Gallery" which implies access to the source code by the end user and no comercial transaction or Chrome Web Store which is bound to Chrome Browser, while what I intend to do is aimed at Google Sites or Google Apps users and perfectly Browser Agnostic. My questions are:
Can I bundle a Google Apps Script based App for sell in the Google Apps Marketplace ?
Can I deploy it without the end users having access to the source code?
The short answer is no. Google Apps Script imposes daily quotas on all of their GAS APIs. These quotas cannot be extended in any way, so it is not feasible to deploy this on a commercial scale. You should take a look at Google Apps Engine which gives much more flexibility for what you want to do.
There is a workaround that I did in the past. I had an installation script (that ran as me) that collected user properties and the actual app script that ran as the individual user and referenced the user properties collected. At the time I didn't set user script properties but you could do that to bypass the first install script I would think. When the user installed they would get an email with the user script link and then they would authorize it separately. Install link was distributed through Google Checkout (deprecated now) but you could do electronic distribution through another venue. Not a traditional app distribution process by any means but maybe it will spark an idea for your specific case.
#Javier - we too arrived at the same conclusion. Google Apps Marketplace (GAM) deployment is just one of the channels to reach businesses but its the un-extendable Google Apps quotas that cripples a commercial deployment of a Google Apps Scripts (GAS) based WebApp.
We tried listing our webapp based on GAS directly into GAM but it failed their SSO requirements as there was no way to use domain-wide delegation to authorize the GAS permissions for the end users if the webapp ran as "user accessing the web app".
While we migrate to a fully stand-alone application, we have managed to deploy a restricted version of the app to GAM indirectly using a GAE instance as a proxy.
Here is how its deployed.
The GAM listing links to a GAE proxy app.
GAE proxy does GAM compliant SSO and redirects all subsequent access to our publicly accessible webapp in "run as me" mode.
GAE proxy passes on any domain data authorized by the GAM client to the webapp.
Implement security mechanism to block unauthorized access to the public webapp and accept calls ONLY from the GAE proxy.
Our current customers (very small businesses/startups) are fine with this security model, but I am afraid this will not scale for larger commercial deployment.
#mrschwen: we too are considering your exactly approach in mind to mitigate quota issues in case our app gets wider adoption until we are forced to move out of the GAS space, even though the end users will be forced to authorize our scripts which will run as 'user accessing the web app'
What options are there to pull a GApps user creation date?
I saw that the Admin SDK is capable of it, is it the only API capable of doing this? does any of the previous one also capable of?
If possible using GAS, it will be most excellent,
Thank you!
Indeed there does not seem be Google Apps Script services to pull the creation date. The DomainUser class provide interesting functionality for interacting with domain users (only for admins).
Using the Admin SDK with Google Apps Script using UrlFetchApp.addOAuthService is not as complex as it looks. You can read this answer which will throw some light on how you can use external API calls for certain Google API and bring the data to Google Apps Script.
The scope for the ADMIN SDK will be as follows
oAuthConfig1.setRequestTokenUrl("https://www.google.com/accounts/OAuthGetRequestToken
?scope=https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly");
Notice that in this case I have requested a readonly scope.