Thanks for the quick response!
> Recalculating a spreadsheet uses some computational resources, so we
probably will never be at a point where we recalculate on every API
request. Additionally, recalculation can take some time and we don't want
to block the API request until that is complete.
Understood. I wouldn't actually want it to recalculate on every API call,
either. Control over whether or not a recalculation happens on a particular
call (e.g. via an HTTP caching header or just a flag in the query params),
or how often recalculations happen (e.g. every x minutes for spreadsheet y,
every z requests, etc.), would be sufficient.
Even without control, just having better predictability around how often
recalculations happen would be great. Right now, it's so unpredictable, I
never know if I'm going to get a recent value or a value that is hours old.
Knowing that recalculations are guaranteed to happen in any Sheets document
in the worst case once every x minutes would at least allow me to select an
appropriate polling interval.
> For context, can you provide some more information about your use case?
Understanding how you use the API will help ensure we build the right
solutions.
As an example, right now I'm trying to take some information that a
spreadsheet computes about my investments and surface it on my phone (and
eventually wristwatch). For example, maybe I'll track my net worth or
spending for a few months. If one wants a metric to move in a specific
direction, one should start by being aware of the value of that metric,
right? ;)
Eventually, I'd like to take other metrics (e.g. new customers today, bugs
squashed this week, Amazon sales this month, etc.) and display them
conveniently, too. Some of this information would already be in
spreadsheets, and some of it is external and needs to be pushed/pulled from
other systems.
Folks will argue that we should be writing scripts to do this, but there
are good reasons to do it via spreadsheets. First, not everyone can write
such a script, and many of those who can would probably end up making a
spreadsheet anyway. Second, scripts like this require some degree of
operationalization, whereas Sheets handles that for you (it's already Ops
for running your business). Third, a single integration point like Sheets
requires fewer integration connections than a point-to-point model. Fourth,
spreadsheets make it easy to combine manually-entered data with live data.
Last, the data from other systems are just that: data. People use
spreadsheets to give those data meaning (or spin for corporate politics...).
So I believe that there's a lot of information that is trapped inside
spreadsheets that people rarely see because they have to open up the sheets
to see it; it's just too many clicks for someone who doesn't live in
spreadsheets all day. With its API and the live nature of its documents,
Sheets will let me surface that information so that more people see it,
more often.
Well... enough proselytizing for today. I hope that gives you an idea of
how I want to use the API,
James
On Tuesday, January 24, 2017 at 11:49:19 AM UTC-5, Eric Koleda wrote:
>
> Hi James,
>
> Thanks for the detailed explanation of the behavior you are seeing.
> Recalculating a spreadsheet uses some computational resources, so we
> probably will never be at a point where we recalculate on every API
> request. Additionally, recalculation can take some time and we don't want
> to block the API request until that is complete. I've started a dialog with
> the engineering team to see if there are any changes we can make to the API
> to make it easier to deal with recalculation.
>
> For context, can you provide some more information about your use case?
> Understanding how you use the API will help ensure we build the right
> solutions.
>
> Thanks,
> - Eric
>
> On Monday, January 23, 2017 at 10:22:52 PM UTC-5, James Dobson wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a sheet with a value is computed from external data, so it is
>> constantly changing. This works well when running Sheets in a browser
>> window. But I’m observing that the value returned by
>> *sheets.spreadsheets.values.get* is often stale. I’m hoping that someone
>> reading this forum can provide some insight as to what’s going on and how I
>> can get fresh data via the API.
>>
>> Here's a simple example:
>>
>> - Create a spreadsheet with the formula *=NOW()* in cell *A1*
>> - In *File* > *Spreadsheet settings…* choose the *Calculation* tab
>> and ensure *Recalculation* is set to *On change and every minute*.
>> - Use the Google APIs Explorer to perform
>> *sheets.spreadsheets.values.get* to get the value of that cell (
>> *range* parameter is typically *Sheet1!A1*)
>> - I’d expect every time I press the *Authorize and execute* button,
>> I’d get a new value for the cell.
>> - What actually happens is that I typically get an old value.
>>
>>
>> I wrote a Python script to poll the API every minute. The median time
>> elapsed before a new value appears is about 70 minutes, but I have seen as
>> high as 1006 minutes, and as low as 1 minute.
>>
>> When the sheet is loaded in a browser window, the cell gets updated every
>> minute as expected. Using the browser to edit another cell causes the API
>> to return the most recent version of the computed cell.
>>
>> It seems that the computation of formulae is a complex process that can
>> execute entirely on the server, entirely on the browser, or in combination:
>>
>> - When the formula is *=NOW()*, there seems to be zero communication
>> between the browser and the server when the formula is recomputed.
>> - When the formula is *=GOOGLEFINANCE("GOOG")*, it seems that the
>> server sends a push notification to the browser about new external data
>> being available, the browser retrieves the external data from the server,
>> and then any dependent cells are computed entirely in the browser.
>>
>>
>> What I’d like to do is be able to force the back-end to recompute the
>> formula when the get API is called. Does anybody know how to do this?
>>
>> The best hack I have is to *get* the formula from the cell using
>> *valueRenderOption=FORMULA*, and then *update* the same formula back to
>> that cell with *valueInputOption=USER_ENTERED* and
>> *responseValueRenderOption=FORMATTED_VALUE*. This forces the server to
>> recompute the formula and returns the result in the response to the
>> *update* call. It also doesn’t seem to pollute the history of the
>> document too much. Unfortunately, this approach creates a race condition
>> that I'd rather avoid.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> James
>>
>>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Google Spreadsheets API" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
