Can I use Google sheets as a small database for my apps?

user_13357595 0
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I have a personal finances spreadsheet on my Google Drive.

For some practice and ease of use, I wanted to make a desktop and mobile app to manipulate it:

  • add an expense
  • list my expenses
  • filter the expenses
  • etc...

Is there a way to do this?

Since it is something so small, I'm trying to avoid anything that needs a dedicated server that I would need to set up or needing to rent any services because it's just a ease of use project and not a "must-have".

I've been searching a lot but most of the time I get confused with responses from 2-3 years ago.

EDIT:

So I found a way, using this video:

https://youtu.be/3OakodfKjrU

Basically using Google App Script you can make some post and get requests, which for me is a step in the right direction. Just needed to think outside of the box a little and I got a simple way to send post requests to create or update, and get requests to read, for now I also use get to delete but this just seems wrong, might change later.

Also I've searched and started doing a PWA (progressive web app) to be the interface, just so I can make it with a single code base and work with almost any device, using pure js, html and css, the only "non-pure" thing is Onsen Ui for the GUI.

google-sheets javascript
1 Answers

You can use an NPMJS package such as google-spreadsheet to work with the Google APIs and manipulate your spreadsheet; the issue for you with trying to build the app without your own server is the need to securely store your Google Account credentials (you don't want this being publicly accessible).

If you could compromise and use a read-only solution, a package such as tabletop might suffice as you don't need to bother with any back-end work; I doubt this would be ideal for you though. You will need to host the application regardless if you want to be able to access it through the world wide web.

Alternatively, you could run the application locally if you would be happy with only being able to use the app that way. Hope it helps and sorry for the rambling!

user_68544550
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