We keep adding new features to the Drive SDK and the Drive API, but always want to make it easy for new developers to get started. That’s why we are introducing a quickstart guide in 6 languages to run your first Drive app in less than 10 minutes: Java, Python, PHP, .NET, Ruby and Go.
At the end of this short guide, you’ll have:
We are also covering this quickstart guide in our Google Developers Live sessions: Python, PHP and .NET are already available and check-out our schedule for the remaining languages.
Once you are up and running, add more features such as reading a file’s metadata and content, update an existing file, integrate with the Drive web UI and list your Drive app on the Chrome Web Store to drive in more users!
Questions, feedback? Let’s follow-up on StackOverflow under the google-drive-sdk tag.
Editor’s Note: Guest author Romain Vialard works at Revevol, an international service provider dedicated to Google Apps and other Cloud solutions. -- Jan Kleinert
In a previous post, Improving Revevol’s Productivity with Google Apps Script, we demonstrated how Apps Script helped us handle a lot of training requests. For any given client, using tools we built with Google Apps Script, we are able to quickly find the perfect trainer depending on variables like the date, the place, the language and the training scope. To ensure that the training we do meets a consistent quality bar, we send a survey to all the participants at the end of the training. This post discusses how we use Google Apps to conduct these surveys to glean insight into the quality of our training.
We started our survey project by using simple Google Forms to poll our users. Each form creates a spreadsheet per language, each with thousands of submissions. From this data, we need to create visualizations to quickly make sense of all the information we gather. We want our international clients to each be presented with a unique dashboard for trainings in all their subsidiaries, our change managers to be able to see the results of any specific training to be sure that everything went well, and our trainers to see only the data they need.
We used Apps Script to tie all the pieces together to fulfill these requirements. We created a translation table in a spreadsheet to automate the translation of each survey, and persist the results using JSON two-dimensional arrays in a spreadsheet cell. Using this data, we present a web based front-end to show several charts and bring controls to filter the data in many ways. Each client is provided with a special access key that allows them to view the dashboards relevant to their organization. Clients log in via their existing Google Accounts, and the application presents and enforces appropriate access control rights that are depending upon their role in the organization.
With the recent addition of libraries in Apps Script, we were able to build this dashboard in a very short amount of time using a few of the notable script libraries linked to from the Apps Script documentation.
With ArrayLib’s method filterByText(data, columnIndex, value), we are able to implement filtering to enforce access controls by role:
filterByText(data, columnIndex, value)
if (e.parameter.selectedTrainer != 'All' && e.parameter.selectedTrainer != undefined) data = ArrayLib.filterByText(data, 1, e.parameter.selectedTrainer); if (e.parameter.selectedClient != 'All' && e.parameter.selectedClient != undefined) data = ArrayLib.filterByText(data, 2, e.parameter.selectedClient.split(','));
With PivotChartsLib, we can create charts based on our survey results in only a few lines of code:
var grid = app.createGrid(3, 2); var chart = PivotChartsLib.createColumnChart(data, 10); grid.setWidget(0, 0, chart); var chart = PivotChartsLib.createPieChart(data, 9); grid.setWidget(0, 1, chart); var chart = PivotChartsLib.createColumnChart(data, 6); grid.setWidget(1, 0, chart);
Apps Script is all about Google Apps. Applications running on Apps Script handle authentication as well as integrating seamlessly with spreadsheets as well as other parts of Google Apps. With Apps Script, we have a powerful tool to tie together all of the more general services from Google Apps and build rich, domain specific applications for our clients.
Hey Tel Aviv developers!
We are organizing a hackathon focusing on Google Drive next week. If you’d like to learn more about the Google Drive SDK and have fun developing your first Google Drive application, join us there!
The event will take place at the Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering. We’ll start with an introduction to the Google Drive SDK at 17:30 on Tuesday September 4th 2012 and the hackathon will run through the whole of the next day. We’ll also have some of the Android team to talk a bit about Android, so be sure to check that out. See the detailed agenda of this 2-day event.
Don’t forget to register and have a look at this document to help you prepare.
See you there!
Editor's note: This has been cross-posted with the Google Analytics blog and the Google Developers blog -- Jan Kleinert
Many people have been asking for a simple way to put Google Analytics data into a Google Spreadsheet. Once the data is inside a Google Spreadsheet, users can easily manipulate Google Analytics data, create new visualizations, and build internal dashboards.
So today we released a new integration that dramatically reduces the work required to put Google Analytics data into any Apps Script supported product, such as Google Docs, Sites, or Spreadsheets.
Here’s an example of Google Analytics data accessed through Apps Script and displayed in a Google Spreadsheet.
We know that a popular use case of this integration will be to create dashboards that automatically update. To make this easy to do, we’ve added a script to the Spreadsheets script gallery that handles all this work - no code required. The script is called Google Analytics Report Automation (Magic).
This script is a great template for starting your own project, and we’ve had many internal Google teams save hours of time using this tool. Here’s a video demoing how to build a dashboard using this script:
You can find this script by opening or creating a Google Spreadsheet, clicking Tools -> Script Gallery and searching for “analytics magic”.
Of course many developers will want to write their own code. With the new Analytics – Apps Script integration, you can request the total visitors, visits, and pageviews over time and put this data into a spreadsheet with just the following code:
// Get Data. var results = Analytics.Data.Ga.get( tableId, startDate, endDate, 'ga:visitors,ga:visits,ga:pageviews', {‘dimensions’: ‘ga:date’}); // Output to spreadsheet. var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().insertSheet(); sheet.getRange(2, 1, results.getRows().length, headerNames.length) .setValues(results.getRows()); // Make Sandwich.
To get started now, read our Automated Access to Google Analytics Data in Google Spreadsheets tutorial. Also check out the Google Analytics Apps Script reference docs.
Are you ready to start building solutions using Google Analytics and Google Apps Script?
We’d love to hear new ways you use this integration to help manipulate, visualize and present data to solve business problems. To encourage you to try out this integration, we are giving out Google Analytics developer t-shirts to the first 15 developers to build a solution using both APIs.
To be eligible, you must publish your solution to either the Chrome Web Store or the Spreadsheets Script Gallery and include a description of a business problem the script solves. We’ll then collect these scripts and highlight the solutions in an upcoming blog post. After you publish your script, fill out this form to share what you’ve built.
We’re looking forward to seeing what you can do with this integration.
Note from editor: The syntax for this feature has changed since this was first posted. The posted has been edited to reflect the change.
Try to think back to when the word “viral” had only negative connotations . . . if you are a web developer trying to market your app on a minimal budget, you may not remember those dark days at all! Viral marketing is currently not just the cheapest but arguably the most effective way to spread the word about your app and to drive user adoption. Through file sharing and MIME type-filtered upsells, Google Drive integration gives apps some powerful “viral” marketing capabilities.
Users love to share files. Google Drive makes this easy for them to do, and we know from experience that they do it often. When users share or sync files that they can’t open using an installed viewer, Drive displays a link to a Chrome Web Store list of apps that can open that file type -- potentially, your app. This can be a powerful mechanism for distributing your app to the users that actually need it.
For example, let’s say someone asks me to review a project plan saved in an .mpp file. I currently don’t have a viewer to open such a file. Am I out of luck? No — help is right there for me at the bottom left of the screen:
.mpp
If I click on this link, I’m redirected to a Chrome Web Store list of installable apps that have registered themselves to open .mpp files. Currently, this includes some excellent options for Drive-integrated project management web apps:
Interested in getting your app in a list like this? It’s not difficult. First, add a special web intent to your Chrome Web Store manifest. This intent should include the MIME types and extensions you'd like your app to be searchable by. Though the type field accepts only MIME types, it allows you to model file extensions as the special type application/vnd.google.drive.ext-type.<EXTENSION>.
type
application/vnd.google.drive.ext-type.<EXTENSION>
{ "name" : "ProjectManagmentApp", "version" : "1", "description" : "A web app to manage projects", "container" : "GOOGLE_DRIVE", "api_console_project_id" : "1234567891011", "gdrive_mime_types": { "http://drive.google.com/intents/opendrivedoc": [ { "type": ["application/vnd.ms-project", "application/vnd.google.drive.ext-type.mpp"], "href": "http://projectapp_web_url/", "title" : "Open", "disposition" : "window" } ] }, ...
Once an intent like this is published in your app listing, you’ll be featured in Chrome Web Store “upsell” lists like the one depicted above, and users viewing the list will be a click away from installing your app. For full detail on adding this web intent to your manifest and testing it for your Chrome Web Store listing, see Help Users Find your App in the Drive SDK documentation.
We recommend that any and all listed apps should list their MIME types for filtering in this way. However, doing so is especially beneficial for apps that can open any of these following types, for which there is currently no registered viewer at all:
message/rfc822
text/x-vcard
application/x-font-ttf
image/gif
Inevitably, users who lack valid viewers will end up with shared files of these MIME types. And just when they are about to throw up their hands, they’ll find your app at the top of the list of apps that can help them open the file. This creates the conditions for a very positive first user experience for your app.
If you have questions or comments about how to add this feature to your app, don’t hesitate to let us know on our Stack Overflow tag, google-drive-sdk.
We know many organizations using Google Drive storage or Google Maps Coordinate have hundreds or even thousands of users to which licenses need to be assigned. That’s why we’re pleased to announce a more streamlined method for managing these licenses using the Enterprise License Manager API.
The API offers a simple and faster way to access the functionality of the License Manager user interface. It can be used to programmatically assign, unassign and re-assign Google Drive storage or Google Maps Coordinate licenses to users in your domain. Google Apps reseller administrators and their customers can also use the API for the same programmatic license assignment.
To begin using the Google Enterprise License Manager API today, follow the instructions in the API documentation. You will need to sign in to the Google APIs Console and activate the API. If you have any questions about this API, please ask them in the Domain Information and Management APIs forum.
