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9 Comments

Stack for pulling data from API into Spreadsheet

Hey everyone - I'm looking for suggestions as to a simple tech stack/solution for automating the following:

  1. Hitting the Spotify API (e.g. https://developer.spotify.com/console/get-artist/)
  2. Parsing the JSON response for specific fields
  3. Adding the values of those fields to a Google Sheet or Airtable

I would want to run this for 100+ artists.

What would be some options for achieving this? Zapier? Python scripts? Something else? Thanks in advance!

posted to Icon for group Developers
Developers
on February 19, 2021
  1. 2

    There's a number of Add-ons (and a few open-source scripts) that do this already:

    1. https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/api_connector/95804724197
    2. https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/apipheny_api_tool/966163326746
    3. https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/api_connector_ii/529655450076
    4. There's also this: https://github.com/bradjasper/ImportJSON

    If you're looking for 10-20K records you're probably better off with #3 or #4 (if you don't want to spend money). I think #1 and #2 limit you on the number of records you can import with their free tiers but you can double check their pricing.

    There's quite a few others for Sheets: https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/search/api

    There's also at least one for Airtable:
    https://airtable.com/marketplace/blkZrRSlxzhBlv6T9/data-fetcher

    1. 1

      Great stuff - thanks very much! This is why I enjoy posts like this, I wasn't even aware of Google's Workspace Marketplace.

      1. 1

        I ended up trying https://apipheny.io/ - worked like a charm!

  2. 2

    You can easily do that using Node.js with some basic libraries (there is an NPM package for Google Sheets).

    Could take very little to write a simple node script that does that 😄

    (Here’s the link to the NPM package https://www.npmjs.com/package/google-spreadsheet)

  3. 1

    well, sheets has its own scripts(js). I do a similar routine for some of clients. Basically I wrote the API connector in a Google App Script (which can also be hosted somewhere else for easier maintainability) and every new client I get I copy the template spreadsheet with the script and triggers, send them the access, and change the env variable to their respective one. Voi la!

    It's not the best tool for scalability, but multiple parts of it can be automated all within the Google environment

  4. 1

    I think this is a little to broad. Is it for a platform where artisits get their own data? Or is it for you just trying to build a dataset? Does speed matter? Are you only updating it once a hour?

    1. 1

      This is just for me to build a dataset. I'm aiming to get about 10-20k records in total for this project.

      1. 2

        Google apps script is literally built into every Google Sheet, is JavaScript, it runs on the cloud, and it's free. I'd suggest that for most people. There are quotas and ways around it. However, because the sheets API is in most popular languages I'd also suggest using whatever you're comfortable with.

  5. 2

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      I'll check it out, thanks!

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