SheetBase

SheetBase is finally launched live 🎉

SheetBase was born from scratching my own itch. Quick story time.

I had been working on another product (BiopharmIQ) and we needed to pull lots of data in from Google Sheets to display on the site as a new feature. The solutions were either to:

1. Standardize the Google Sheets & pull the data in via the Google API or
2. Set up a DB on a server to store the data, create endpoints to access them, and ways for non-tech ppl to enter data into them (in a somewhat enjoyable fashion).

I went with an approach that used both. However pulling in the data from the Google Sheets via the Google API wasn't that simple. I had to read through all the docs, try and understand how their API's worked, and get all the permissions and auth setup. Not to mention Google has tons of API's so I wasn't sure exactly what I needed, and the docs weren't that user friendly..

After an emotional rollercoaster I finally understand how the Google API (somewhat) works. I was also exploring the OAuth standard and thought I might as well combine the two.

I'm sure others are dealing with the same things:

1. Non-tech business owners/employees that had data in Google Sheets that they wanted to keep their instead of entering into a separate site/db.
2. Deadlines to get things working - and no time to tangle with Google API (or any API for that matter).
3. A thorough understanding of RESTful endpoints and how they work.

I had also just went down a rabbit hole on @levelsio & @AndreyAzimov and about his amazing product Sheet2Site.

I don't know where I'll take SheetBase right now - I'm hoping to explore the various use cases further.

Happy to have this live :)